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TENNYSON'S 



THE PRINCESS 



Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 



BY 



ALBERT S. COOK, Ph.D., L.H.D. 

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN YALE UNIVERSITY 
PRESIDENT OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA 




Boston, U.S.A., and London 
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 



KECEIVED 



AzCt 



1086 



Copyright, 1897 
By albert S. COOK 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



;^-3f^r^ 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

^amc0 IbaMeis 

PROFESSOR IN YALE COLLEGE FROM 1848 TO 1872 
WHO, ALMOST ALONE AMONG HIS CONTEMPO- 
RARIES, ANTICIPATED THE JUDGMENT 
OF OUR LATER GENERATION 
UPON THE MERITS 
OF 

THE PRINCESS 



I BELIEVE IN PROGRESS 
AND I WOULD CONSERVE THE HOPES OF MAN 
Tennyson to Aubrey deVerb 



PREFACE. 



When the publishers requested me to undertake an edition 
of The Princess^ I at first saw no reason why I should. I 
argued that there were already a sufficient number of anno- 
tated editions, — that of Wallace, with its minute and elab- 
orate notes ; of Rolfe, with its critical examination of the 
progress of the poem through the five editions by means of 
which it attained finality, those of 1847, 1848, 1850, 185 1, 
and 1853 ; of Woodberry, with its masterly Introduction ; of 
George, with its exaltation of Tennyson and the poets gen- 
erally ; and of Boynton, with its exclusion of all that could 
possibly be spared ; besides the Study by Dawson, but for 
which all the editions named would have been distinctly 
poorer. Yet, on consideration, I found that none of these 
editions quite satisfied me; which is only another way of 
saying that I am I, with my own idiosyncrasies. One 
of my notions was that the student should be encouraged 
to do somewhat more for himself than the other editors 
seemed to think necessary; and another was that he 
should be shown how to direct his labor to the greatest 
advantage. 

Where information was to be supplied, I usually discovered 
that one or another of my predecessors had provided what 
was needful; under these circumstances, I could either 
quote, giving credit ; or paraphrase, with a fallacious show 



vi PREFACE. 

of independence ; or draw from original sources. To the 
second of these I have rarely resorted ; where statements 
were especially accurate and felicitous I have employed the 
first means ; and in many cases I have had recourse to the 
third method. I found that Dawson had very frequently 
been transcribed or adapted by his successors ; and I had 
no option but to follow their example, only that I have 
adhered with considerable uniformity to the former of these 
methods of utilizing his labors. Besides this obligation, I 
have also to thank Mr. Dawson for his courteous permission 
to reprint Tennyson's letter in full. In doing so, I have 
taken the liberty of deviating in some typographical respects 
from the original as printed in Dawson's second edition of 
his Study ; otherwise I believe my copy to be faithful. 

I have brought forward some of the more eminent of 
Tennyson's critics, to present the different aspects under 
which his work can be regarded, in the belief that more is 
to be gained from a comparison of various opinions than 
from conning the views of any one individual. Instead of 
commenting at length upon metrical peculiarities, I have 
rather chosen to avail myself of the collection of examples 
made by Professor Corson, in his Primer of English Verse^ 
and to refer from the respective lines to my reprint from his 
book, permission to use which was freely accorded. Obliga- 
tions to other works than those already mentioned are for 
the most part duly recorded in their proper places. 

As to the text, I have deliberately departed from the 
inconsistent usage with respect to the weak past participle 
which has prevailed from the first edition to the present. 
Hitherto, ed, 'd, and t have been employed, upon a plan 
which may possibly have meant something to its inventor. 



PREFACE. vii 

but which is not in accord with any recognized phonetic 
principle, and which presents to the eye only a confused 
mixture of conventional regularity (^^), Landorian reform 
spellings (/), and eighteenth century modishness (W). Thus, 
in the first sixty-five lines of the poem, as well in the defini- 
tive edition of the Works published by Macmillan as in the 
first edition of The Princess (which of course omits besieged 

— drown' d, inclusive), I ^x\6.: Jlock'd — phonetics would 
ro^qmxe Jiockf ; showed; carved; cursed — phonetically ^rz/rj-/,- 
dived; mixt — phonetically on a plane with cursed and 
flocked ; arni'd ; besieged; shimji'd ; seemed ; whelmed ; pusJi'd 

— why not pusht ? one might ask ; drowned; murmur' d; 
moved; reared; da7iced ; fired. Perhaps it maybe assumed 
(assuj?i\i?) that the poet was responsible for these, and 
therefore they should be left untouched {iintouch'd? un- 
touchtT)\ but I cannot feel that they add either beautiful 
or characteristic touches to the poetry as such, and it is 
hardly worth while to perpetuate them as a monument either 
of Tennyson's or the printer's confusion or negligence. 
Hence I have had no scruples in writing uniformly ed, 
except where standard usage requires /. The thd' and tlwo' 
of the current editions have been retained. Here and there 
I have changed the punctuation, when it seemed that the 
sense would be more clearly brought out. 

For definition I have frequently been indebted to the 
Standard Dictionary, sometimes with and sometimes with- 
out specific acknowledgment. The art of definition is a 
peculiarly difficult one ; and it is a pleasure to record my 
belief that the Standard Dictionary is in this particular 
unexcelled among English works of its class. Smith's 
Dictiofzary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 



VIU 



PREFACE. 



has been freely drawn upon for the illustration of ancient 
proper names. 

My views on the teaching of The Princess are indicated in 
the Introduction, under the head, Suggestions to Students. 
In schools where this poem is 'read,' and not 'studied,' 
the apparatus provided can easily be ignored or slighted ; 
but, personally, I could wish that literature deemed worthy 
of designation by a National Committee for use in the schools 
should likewise be deemed worthy of something more than 
a hurried perusal — should bear to be dwelt on ; should, 
indeed, so fascinate by its charms and virtues as irresistibly 
to compel a more intimate acquaintance on the part of the 
student. 

MoNTViLLE, New Jersey, 
August 30, 1897. 



CONTENTS. 





PAGE 


Introduction 


xi 


Suggestions to Students 


xi 


Critical Comments 


xiv 


Tennyson's Letter on the Princess 


xxxvi 


Illustrations of Metrical Peculiarity 


xl 


The Princess : A Medley ...... 


I 


Prologue 


I 


Part I. . 


17 


"II 


. . 36 


" III 


66 


"IV 


86 


" V 


116 


"VI 


• 143 


" VII 


161 


Conclusion 


. 181 



INTRODUCTION. 



I. SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS. 

All study is a quest of something. One seeks, in order to find. 
Before undertaking the study of The Princess^ therefore, it is 
only proper to inquire toward what objects this quest may most 
profitably be directed. Considering the nature of the poem — 
for it is in this that the answer is to be sought — we find that The 
Princess abounds in beauty, and that its object is to set forth and 
illustrate a truth or truths of which the poet is profoundly con- 
vinced. This being conceded, it follows that, while opinions are 
likely to vary concerning the degree or amount of beauty and of 
truth attained, it is improbable that any one who has qualified 
himself by reflection to form a judgment on the matter will assert 
that the poet has compassed both absolute beauty and absolute 
truth. In other words, we must hold ourselves prepared, how- 
ever we may at first sight be dazzled by the many and varied 
excellences of the poem, to recognize in it the presence of more 
or less imperfection. 

From what has been said it follows that our quest in the study 
of TJie Princess is threefold. Stating the objects in the order of 
their importance relatively to this particular poem, we accordingly 
have : 

I. A QUEST OF BEAUTY. 
II. A QUEST OF TRUTH. 
III. A QUEST OF IMPERFECTION. 

In order that the true character of the third quest, the quest of 
imperfection, may not be misapprehended, we must remind our- 
selves that, in poetry, what we have here named the quest of im- 



xii INTR on UC TION. 

perfection might as properly be called the endeavor to educate 
oneself up to higher and higher standards of judgment. In the 
course of the following pages Churton Collins and Bayard Taylor 
— the latter himself a poet — do not hesitate to criticize certain 
indications of inferiority which the poem here and there affords. 
It will not on this account be inferred that these scholarly stu- 
dents of literature are less sensitive than the generality of readers 
to the beauty and truth with which the poem is replete ; it ought 
rather to be concluded — provided their criticisms, after pro- 
tracted and repeated study, prove to be just — that they perceive 
a higher beauty or a more absolute truth than those to which 
the poet has succeeded in giving perfect embodiment. Instead of 
being less sensitive to the presence or absence of high quality 
than the generality of readers, these lovers of literature are far 
more so ; their ears are attuned to nobler melodies than can 
always be realized by even a poet of Tennyson's exquisite feeling 
for the music of verse ; and a presentation which fully satisfies 
the ordinary person may to them seem in some respects inade- 
quate or faulty. Hence, if at a first reading we are repelled by 
the insinuation that Tennyson is open to the reproach conveyed 
in the following paragraph from Shairp's Aspects of Poetry (pp. 
133, 134), we must not immediately condemn the writer for a 
failure to perceive so much of loveliness and noble thought as the 
poem contains, but rather endeavor to elevate ourselves, by the 
help of Tennyson and all other true poets, to a plane where we 
can perceive the element of rightness, be it greater or smaller, 
which the criticism embodies. Professor Shairp says : 

' " A dressy literature, an exaggerated literature, seem to be 
fated to us. These are our curses, as other times had theirs." 
With these words Mr. Bagehot closes his essay to which I have 
alluded. No doubt the multitude of uneducated and half-educated 
readers, which every day increases, loves a highly ornamented, not 
to say a meretricious, style, both in literature and in the arts ; and 
if these demand it, writers and artists will be found to furnish it. 
There remains, therefore, to the most educated the task of counter- 
working this evil. With them it lies to elevate the thought, and 
to purify the taste, of less cultivated readers, and so to remedy 



SUGGESTIONS TO STUDENTS. xiii 

one of the evils incident to democracy. To high thinking and 
noble living the pure style is natural. But these things are 
severe, require moral bracing, minds which are not luxurious, 
and can endure hardness. Softness, luxuriousness, and moral 
limpness find their congenial element in excess of highly colored 
ornamentation.' 

Can you love Tennyson, can you admire The Princess^ and yet 
read without violent indignation a passage like the foregoing? 
Can you calmly and resolutely set yourself to the task of learning 
the reasons why the critic has indulged in such severity, and of 
correctly appraising the value of his judgment? Finally, if there 
be any justice in his view, can you come to recognize it, without 
ceasing to appreciate at their full worth all the beauty and truth 
which The Princess contains? If so, you will have exemplified 
at its best the quest of imperfection, and will have found that 
under this name you have really been pursuing the highest beauty 
and the highest truth ; and that you have formed some conception, 
however insufficient, of what the attainment of perfection means, 
and of the infinite pains which are required for even a tolerable 
approximation to it in such an art as poetry. 

But these matters are high and hard, and the quest of imper- 
fection necessarily follows, rather than precedes, the quest of 
beauty and truth. To perceive, to take and give account of, and, 
above all, to enjoy the beauty and truth resident in a fine piece of 
literature, can any exercise of human faculty, short of the creative, 
surpass this ? I except the creative, for surely the poet's act of 
conception, and much of the subsequent execution, — or any 
similar exercise of creative power, even if of lower degree, — must 
transcend the mere reception of impressions from the works thus 
created. But, neglecting this alone, what can vie with such appre- 
hension, such laying hold upon, of a noble poem, for instance? We 
must never forget, for it is a truth of prime order, what Words- 
worth has taught us : 

We live by admiration, hope, and love. 

And surely the study of the best literature affords most ample 
scope for the cultivation of at least two out of these three emo- 



xiv INTRODUCTION. 

tions or virtues, namely, admiration and love. To employ Ten- 
nyson's own words : 

We needs must love the highest when we see it. 

If this be true, it only remains that we shall take the trouble to 
see what then we cannot help but admire and love. To this end, 
with some reference also to that loftier, more ultimate, because 
more comprehensive search for imperfection, the comments in this 
book have been framed or brought together. There is no virtue 
for the student in the comments, apart from the quest for beauty 
and truth. To learn the notes, to look up references, is the 
sheerest waste of time and energy, unless the effort be guided 
and hallowed by this lofty aim, looking to such pure and intense 
enjoyment as will quicken all the faculties of the soul, and give a 
sort of divine zest to all endeavor. 

II. CRITICAL COMMENTS. 

[F. W. Robertson, Lectures and Addresses, pp. 154-5.] 

I placed Tennyson in the first order. And this not from any 
bigoted blindness to his deficiencies and faults, which are many, 
nor from any Quixotic desire to compare him with the very high- 
est; but because, if the division be a true one which separates poets 
into the men of genuine passion and men of skill, it is impossible 
to hesitate in which Tennyson is to be placed. I ranked him with 
the first order, because with great mastery over his material, words, 
great plastic power of versification, and a rare gift of harmony, he 
has also Vision or Insight; and because, feeling intensely the great 
questions of his day, not as a mere man of letters, but as a man, 
he is to some extent the interpreter of his age, not only in its 
mysticism, which I tried to show you is the necessary reaction 
from the rigid formulas of science and the earthliness of an age of 
work, into the vagueness which belongs to infinitude, but also in 
his poetic and almost prophetic solution of some of its great 
questions. 

Thus, in his Princess., which he calls a 'medley,' the former half 
of which is sportive, and the plot almost too fantastic and impos- 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. XV 

sible for criticism, while the latter portion seems too serious for a 
story so slight and flimsy, he has with exquisite taste disposed of 
the question which has its burlesque and comic as well as its tragic 
side, of woman's present place and future destinies. And if any 
one wishes to see this subject treated with a masterly and delicate 
hand, in protest alike against the theories which would make her 
as the man, which she could only be by becoming masculine, not 
manly, and those which would have her to remain the toy, or the 
slave, or the slight thing of sentimental and frivolous accomphsh- 
ment which education has hitherto aimed at making her, I would 
recommend him to study the last few pages of The Princess, where 
the poet brings the question back, as a poet should, to nature; 
develops the ideal out of the actual woman, and reads out of what 
she is, on the one hand what her Creator intended her to be, and 
on the other, what she never can nor ought to be. 

[Stedman, Victorian Poets, pp. 164-7.] 

There comes a time in the life of every aspiring artist when, 
if he be a painter, he tires of painting cabinet pictures, — however 
much they satisfy his admirers; if a poet, he says to himself: 
' Enough of lyrics and idyls; let me essay a masterpiece, a sus- 
tained production, that shall bear to my former work the relation 
which an opera or oratorio bears to a composer's sonatas and can- 
zonets.' It may be that some feeling of this kind impelled Ten- 
nyson to write The Princess, the theme and story of which are 
both his own invention. At that time he had not learned the truth 
of Emerson's maxim that 'Tradition supplies a better fable than 
any invention can'; and that it is as well for a poet to borrow 
from history or romance a tale made ready to his hands, and 
which his genius must transfigure. The poem is, as he entitled 
it, ' A Medley,' constructed of ancient and modern materials, — a 
show of medieval pomp and movement, observed through an 
atmosphere of latter-day thought and emotion; so varying, withal, 
in the scenes and language of its successive parts, that one may 
well conceive it to be told by the group of thoroughbred men and 
maidens who, one after another, rehearse its cantos to beguile a 



X vi INTR OD UC TJON. 

festive summer's day. I do not sympathize with the criticisms to 
which it has been subjected upon this score, and which is but the 
old outcry of the French classicists against Victor Hugo and the 
romance school. The poet, in his prelude, anticipates every stric- 
ture, and to me the anachronisms and impossibilities of the story 
seem not only lawful, but attractive. Like those of Shakespeare's 
comedies, they invite the reader off-hand to a purely ideal world; 
he seats himself upon an English lawn, as upon a Persian enchanted 
carpet, — hears the mystic word pronounced, and, presto ! finds 
himself in fairyland. Moreover, Tennyson's special gift of reduc- 
ing incongruous details to a common structure and tone is fully 
illustrated in a poem made 

To suit with time and place, 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 
A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 

This were a medley ! we should have him back 
Who told the ' Winter's Tale ' to do it for us. 

But not often has a lovelier story been recited. After the 
idyllic introduction, the body of the poem is composed in a semi- 
heroic verse. Other works of our poet are greater, but none is so 
fascinating as this romantic tale : English throughout, yet combin- 
ing the England of Cceur de Leon with that of Victoria in one 
bewitching picture. Some of the author's most delicately musical 
lines — 'jewels five words long' — are herein contained, and the 
ending of each canto is an effective piece of art. 

The tournament scene, at the close of the fifth book, is the most 
vehement and rapid passage to be found in the whole range of 
Tennyson's poetry. By an approach to the Homeric swiftness, it 
presents a contrast to the laborious and faulty movement of much 
of his narrative verse. The songs, added in the second edition of 
this poem, reach the high-water mark of lyrical composition. Few 
will deny that, taken together, the five melodies: ' As through the 
land,' ' Sweet and low,' 'The splendor falls on castle walls,' 'Home 
they brought her warrior dead,' and ' Ask me no more ! ' — that 
these constitute the finest group of songs produced in our century; 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xvii 

and the third, known as the 'Bugle Song,' seems to many the most 
perfect English lyric since the time of Shakespeare. In The 
Princess we also find Tennyson's most successful studies upon the 
model of the Theocritan isometric verse. He was the first to 
enrich our poetry with this class of melodies, for the burlesque 
pastorals of the eighteenth century need not be considered. Not 
one of the blank-verse songs in his Arthurian epic equals in struc- 
ture or feeling the ' Tears, idle tears,' and ' O swallow, swallow, 
flying, flying south ! ' Again, what witchery of landscape and 
action, what fair women and brave men, who, if they be somewhat 
stagy and traditional, at least are more sharply defined than the 
actors in our poet's other romances ! Besides, The Princess has 
a distinct purpose, — the illustration of woman's struggles, aspira- 
tions, and proper sphere; and the conclusion is one wherewith the 
instincts of cultured people are so thoroughly in accord, that some 
are used to answer, when asked to present their view of the 
'woman question,' 'You will find it at the close of The Princess? 
Those who disagree with Tennyson's presentation acknowledge 
that if it be not true it is well told. His Ida is, in truth, a 
beautiful and heroic figure : — 

She bowed as if to veil a noble tear. 



Not peace she looked, the Head ; but rising up 
Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 
To the open window moved. 

She stretched her arms and called 
Across the tumult, and the tumult fell. 

Of the author's shortcomings in this and other poems we have to 
speak hereafter. I leave The Princess, deeming it the most varied 
and interesting of his works with respect to freshness and invention. 
All mankind love a story-teller such as Tennyson, by this creation, 
proved himself to be. 

[Traill, in Nineteenth Century XXV. 765-6.] 

Let his sympathy once be touched, and at once the stream of 
humor flows bright and free. How sweetly, for instance, it ripples 
through the poem of The Princess/ Do you not feel as you listen 



xviii INT ROD UC TION. 

to its placid murmur that already, well-nigh fifty years ago, this 
poet had penetrated to the heart of that great Woman Question 
which is agitating so many humorless minds at the present day, 
and that he has reached it by the aid of the only guide that knows 
the way to it, — by the power of humorous sympathy? Critics 
more than one have spoken disparagingly of The Princess^ and its 
technical faults of construction are obvious enough. But, if the 
design and fashioning of the work leave something to be desired, 
its fabric, — a warp of the sweetest poetry shot with a woof of the 
kindliest satire, — is of unsurpassable charm. The poem is instinct 
throughout with the poet's profound tenderness for the pathetic 
side of modern feminine aspirations and unrest, yet also alive 
throughout with his keen sense of the underlying comedy of it all." 
Let those who undervalue this exquisite piece of work consider 
how its subject would have fared in the hands of any one who 
simply brought to it a humor unsoftened by sympathy or a 
sympathy unchastened by humor. Let them endeavor to imagine 
the sour epigrams of the one and the sickly gush of the other, 
and they may then, perhaps, better appreciate the qualities which 
make The Princess what it is. For my own part, I confess to find- 
ing it, if not one of the poetically greatest, yet the most humanly 
complete of all the poet's works. I know no other, at any rate, 
which shows so many facets of his genius or gives anything like 
so adequate an idea of that rich matrix of natural temperament 
from which the precious ore was won. 

[ Saintsbury, History of Ni7ieteenth Century Literatjire, pp. 261-2.] 

The Princess is undoubtedly Tennyson's greatest effort, if not 
exactly in comedy, in a vein verging towards the comic — a side 
on which he was not so well equipped for offense or for defense as 
on the other. But it is a masterpiece. Exquisite as its author's 
verse always is, it was never more exquisite than here, whether in 
blank verse or in the (superadded) lyrics, while none of his delib- 
erately arranged plays contains characters half so good as those of 
the Princess herself, of Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche, of Cyril, 
of the two Kings, and even of one or two others. And that 
unequaled dream-faculty of his, which has been more than once 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xix 

glanced at, enabled him to carry off whatever was fantastical in 
the conception with almost unparalleled felicity. It may or may 
not be agreed that the question of the equality of the sexes is one 
of the distinguishing questions of this century; and some of those 
who would give it that position may or not maintain, if they think 
it worth while, that it is treated here too lightly, while their oppo- 
nents may wish that it had been treated more lightly still. But 
this very difference will point the unbiased critic to the same con- 
clusion, that Tennyson has hit the golden mean; while that, what- 
ever he has hit or missed in subject, the verse of his essay is golden, 
no one who is competent will doubt. Such lyrics as 'The splendor 
falls,' and 'Tears, idle tears,' such blank verse as that of the closing 
passage, would raise to the topmost heights of poetry whatever 
subject it was spent upon. 

[ Arthur Henry Hallam, Remains in Verse atid Prose, pp. 440-1.^] 

We have remarked five distinct excellencies of his own manner. 
First, his luxuriance of imagination, and, at the same time, his con- 
trol over it. Secondly, his power of embodying himself in ideal 
characters, or, rather, moods of character, with such extreme accu- 
racy of adjustment that the circumstances of the narration seem 
to have a natural correspondence with the predominant feeling, 
and, as it were, to be evolved from it by assimilative force. 
Thirdly, his vivid, picturesque delineation of objects and the 
peculiar skill with which he holds all of them fused, to borrow a 
metaphor from science, in a medium of strong emotion. Fourthly, 
the variety of his lyrical measures and exquisite modulation of 
harmonious words and cadences to the swell and fall of the feel- 
ings expressed. Fifthly, the elevated habits of thought, implied 
in these compositions, and imparting a mellow soberness of tone, 
more impressive to our minds than if the author had drawn up a 
set of opinions in verse and sought to instruct the understanding, 
rather than to communicate the love of beauty to the heart. 

[1 From a review of Tennyson's poems published in the Englishman'' s 
Magazine^ 1831-] 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

[J. Churton Collins, Illustrations of Tennyson, pp. 2-12, 176-8.] 

Without going so far as Harpax in Albumazar^ when he 
says — 

This poet is that poet's plagiary, 

And he a third's till they all end in Homer — 

it is still interesting and necessary to remember that there have 
appeared in all literatures, at a certain point in their development, 
a class of poets w^ho are essentially imitative and reflective. They 
have usually been men possessed of great natural ability, exten- 
sive culture, refined taste, wide and minute acquaintance with the 
literature which preceded them; they have occasionally been men 
endowed with some of the most precious attributes of original 
genius. The poets of Alexandria, the epic, lyric, and elegiac 
poets of Rome, are the most striking types of this class in ancient 
times. Tasso, Gray, and Tennyson are, perhaps, the most strik- 
ing types in the modern world. In point of diction and expres- 
sion, and regarded in relation to the mere material on which he 
works, Milton would also be included in this class of poets. But 
he is separated from them by the quality of his genius and his 
essential originality. What he borrows is not simply modified or 
adapted, but assimilated and transformed. In the poets who have 
been referred to, with the occasional exception of Virgil, what is bor- 
rowed undergoes, as a rule, no such transformation. They may be 
compared indeed to skilful horticulturists. They naturalize exotics. 
A flower which is the beauty of one region they transplant to 
another; and they call art to the assistance of nature. If a blos- 
som be single they double it; if its hue be lovely it is rendered 
more lovely still. The work of such poets has a twofold value: 
it has — to borrow an expression from the schools — not only an 
exoteric but an esoteric interest. To sit down, for instance, to 
the study of the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the jEneid, without 
being familiar with the illustrative masterpieces of Greek poetry 
and the fragments of the older Roman literature, would be like 
traveling through a country, rich with, historical traditions and 
splendid with poetical associations, without possessing any sense 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxi 

of either. The uncritical spectator might be satisfied with the 
sensuous glory of the scenery, the simple loveliness of cloud and 
landscape, and the thousand effects of contrast and perspective; 
but an enlightened man would feel something very like contempt 
for one who, with the Ilissus and the Mincio whispering at his 
feet, was sensible only of the natural beauties of the landscape 
round him. Nature has indeed made one world. Art another. 
Lord Tennyson has now, by general consent, taken his place 
among English classics; he, too, will have, like Virgil and Horace, 
like Tasso and Gray, his critics and his commentators; and, un- 
less I am much mistaken, one of the most important and useful 
departments of their labor will be that of tracing his obligations 
to his predecessors, of illustrating his wondrous assimilative skill, 
his tact, his taste, his learning. John de Peyrarede once observed 
that he knew no task more instructive than to compare Virgil's 
adaptations of Homer with the original passages — to note what 
details he rejected, what he added, what he softened down, what 
he thought proper to heighten. It was a perpetual study of the 
principles of good taste. . . . 

Tennyson, then, belongs to a class of poets whose work has a 
twofold value and interest — a value and interest, that is to say, 
dependent on its obvious, simple, and intrinsic beauties, which is 
its exoteric and popular side, and a value and interest dependent 
on niceties of adaptation, allusion, and expression, which is its 
esoteric and critical side. To a certain point only he is the poet of 
the multitude; preeminently is he the poet of the cultured. Nor, 
I repeat, will his services to art be ever understood and justly 
appreciated till his writings come to be studied in detail; till they 
are, as those of his masters have been, submitted to the ordeal of 
the minutest critical investigation; till the delicate mechanism of 
his diction shall be analyzed as scholars analyze the kindred sub- 
tleties of Sophocles and Virgil; till the sources of his poems have 
been laid bare and the original and the copy placed side by side; 
till we are in possession of comparative commentaries on his 
poems as exhaustive as those with which OrelH illustrated Horace, 
and Eichhoff Virgil. His poems must be studied not as we study 
those of the fathers of song — as we study those of Homer, 



xxii INTRODUCTION. 

Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare — but as we study those who stand 
first in the second rank of poets. In dealing with him we have 
not to deal with a Homer, but with an ApoUonius, not with an 
Alcaeus, but with a Horace — not, that is to say, with a poet of 
great original genius, but with an accomplished artist, with one 
whose mastery lies in assimilative skill, whose most successful 
works are not direct studies from simple nature, but studies from 
nature interpreted by art. He belongs, in a word, to a school 
which stands in the same relation to the literature of England as 
the Alexandrian poets stood to the literature of Greece, and as 
the Augustan poets stood to the literature of Rome. 

To illustrate what has been said. In the works of the fathers 
of poetry everything is drawn directly from Nature. Their char- 
acters are the characters of real life. The incidents they describe 
are, as a rule, such incidents as have their counterpart in human 
experience. When they paint inanimate objects, either simply in 
detail or comprehensively in groups, their pictures are transcripts 
of what they have with their own eyes beheld. In description 
for the mere sake of description they seldom indulge. The phys- 
ical universe is with them merely the stage on which the tragi- 
comedy of life is evolving itself. Their language is as a rule 
plain, simple, impassioned. When they are obscure the obscurity 
arises not from affectation but from necessity. Little solicitous 
about the niceties of conception and expression, they are almost 
free from what the Greeks called KpoKvXeyimds (dealing in trifles) 
and ^vxpdr-qs (ambitious conceits). Their object was to describe 
and interpret, not to refine and subtilize. They were great artists 
not because they worked consciously on critical principles but 
because they communed with truth. They were true to Art 
because they were true to Nature. 

In the school of which we may take Virgil and Tennyson to be 
the most conspicuous representatives, a school which seldom fails 
to make its appearance in every literature at a certain point of its 
development, all this is reversed. Their material is derived not 
from the world of Nature, but from the world of Art. The hint, 
the framework, the method of their most characteristic composi- 
tions seldom or never emanate from themselves. . . . 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxiii 

Both delight in substituting subtle suggestiveness for simplicity 
and directness of expression. ... If Tennyson would describe 
the flight of scared deer it is — 

Twinkled the innumerable ear and tail ( The Brook) ; 

or a gesture of surprise, it is — 

Up went the hushed amaze of hand and eye {Princess). 

So again perfectly commonplace things are presented in a euphu- 
ism which borders on the ludicrous. But here between Virgil 
and Tennyson resemblance ceases. Virgil has never gone further 
in this stilted euphuism than ' dona laboratas cereris ' for loaves, 
or ' Eliadum palmas equarum ' for mares who win the prize at 
Elis, His delicate good taste would have preserved him from 
such extravagances as 

the knightly growth that fringed his lips {Passing of Arthur) 

for a moustache, or 

azure pillars of the hearth {Princess) 

for ascending smoke, or 

ambrosial orbs {Isabel) 
for apples. 

In truth this peculiarity of Tennyson's diction is much more in 
the style of Lycophron and Nonnus, or in the style of the Prd- 
cieuses of the Hotel Rambouillet than on the model of Virgil. 
Equally un-Virgilian and Nonnic are the stilted periphrases 
affected in so many of Tennyson's blank verse poems, notably 
The Princess and the Idylls. . . . Instances of these peculiari- 
ties in the style of Nonnus and Tennyson (they are characteristic 
of all literatures in their decadence, and have been severely com- 
mented on by Longinus) might be extended indefinitely. . . . 

How far the immense extent of Lord Tennyson's indebtedness 
to his predecessors in various languages may be judged to detract 
from his claim to originality, is a question with which I have no 
concern. Many analogies and parallels no doubt resolve them- 
selves into mere coincidences; many are examples of those poetic 
commonplaces which must necessarily abound wherever poetry 



xxiv INTRODUCTION. 

finds voluminous expression; but the greater part of them as 
obviously represent the material on which he has worked as the 
Homeric parodies in the ^?ieid indicate their originals. . . . 
But I should not like it to be supposed that, because I have in- 
stituted a comparison between Lord Tennyson and Virgil, I have 
assumed that they stand on the same level. The distance which 
separates the author of In Memoriam and the Idylls of the King 
from the author of the Georgics and the ^neid is almost as con- 
siderable as the distance which separates all other poets now liv- 
ing from the author of In Meinoriajn. It measures indeed the 
difference between a great classic whose power and charm will be 
felt in all ages, and in all regions coextensive with civilized 
humanity, and a poet who will be a classic intelligible to those 
only who speak his language and think his thoughts. In tone and 
temper Lord Tennyson is, to borrow an expression of M. Taine, 
the most insular of eminent English poets, as he is assuredly the 
most conventional. And it is this which explains the extraordinary 
fascination which for nearly half a century he has exercised over 
his countrymen. A gift of felicitous and musical expression which 
it would be no exaggeration to describe as marvelous, an instinc- 
tive sympathy with what is best and most elevated in the sphere 
of the commonplace — of commonplace thought, of commonplace 
sentiment and activity — with corresponding representative power, 
a most rare faculty of seizing and fixing in very perfect form what 
is commonly so inexpressible because so impalpable and evanes- 
cent in emotion and impression, and a power of catching and ren- 
dering the charm of Nature, of meadow, wood, and mountain, of 
sky and stream, of tree and flower, with a fidelity and vividness 
which resembles magic, and lastly, unrivaled skill in choosing, 
repolishing, and resetting the gems which are our common in- 
heritance from the past : in these gifts is to be found the secret 
of his eminence. And these gifts will suffice for immortality. 

[Charles Kingsley, in Fraser''s Magaziiie XLII (1850) 250-1.] 

The idyllic manner alternates with the satiric, the pathetic, even 
the sublime, by such imperceptible gradations, and continual deli- 
cate variations of key, that the harmonious medley of his style 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxv 

becomes the fit outward expression of the bizarre and yet harmo- 
nious fairyland in which his fancy ranges. In this work, too, Mr, 
Tennyson shows himself more than ever the poet of the day. In 
it more than ever the old is interpenetrated with the new — the 
domestic and scientific with the ideal and sentimental. He dares, 
in every page, to make use of modern words and notions, from 
which the mingled clumsiness and archaism of his compeers shrinks 
as unpoetical. Though ... his stage is an ideal fairyland, yet 
he has reached the ideal by the only true method, — by bringing 
the Middle Age forward to the present one, and not by ignoring 
the present to fall back on a cold and galvanized mediaevalism ; 
and thus he makes his ' Medley ' a mirror of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, possessed of its own new art and science, its own new temp- 
tations and aspirations, and yet grounded on, and continually 
striving to reproduce, the forms and experiences of all past time. 
The idea, too, of T/ie Princess is an essentially modern one. In 
every age women have been tempted, by the possession of superior 
beauty, intellect, or strength of will, to deny their own womanhood, 
and attempt to stand alone as men, whether on the ground of 
political intrigue, ascetic saintship, or philosophic pride. Cleo- 
patra and St. Hedwiga, Madame de Stael and the Princess, are 
merely different manifestations of the same self-willed and proud 
longing of woman to unsex herself, and realize, single and self- 
sustained, some distorted and partial notion of her own as to what 
the ' angelic life ' should be. Cleopatra acted out the pagan ideal 
of an angel ; St. Hedwiga, the mediaeval one ; Madame de Stael 
hers, with the peculiar notions of her time as to what ^ spiritiieP 
might mean ; and in The Princess Mr. Tennyson has embodied 
the ideal of that nobler, wider, purer, yet equally fallacious, 
because equally unnatural analogue, which we may meet too often 
up and down England now. He shows us the woman, when she 
takes her stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, working 
out her own moral punishment, by destroying in herself the tender 
heart of flesh ; not even her vast purposes of philanthropy can 
preserve her, for they are built up, not on the womanhood which 
God has given her, but on her own self-will ; they change, they 
fall, they become inconsistent, even as she does herself, till at last 



XX vi INTRODUCTION. 

she loses all feminine sensibility ; scornfully and stupidly she re- 
jects and misunderstands the heart of man ; and then, falling 
from pride to sternness, from sternness to sheer inhumanity, she 
punishes sisterly love as a crime, robs the mother of her child, and 
becomes all but a vengeful fury, with all the peculiar faults of 
woman, and none of the peculiar excellences of man. 

The poem being, as its title imports, a medley of jest and 
earnest, allows a metrical license of which we are often tempted 
to wish that its author had not availed himself ; yet the most un- 
metrical and apparently careless passages flow with a grace, a 
lightness, a colloquial ease and frolic, which perhaps only heighten 
the effect of the serious parts, and serve as a foil to set off the 
unrivaled finish and melody of these latter. In these come out 
all Mr. Tennyson's instinctive choice of tone, his mastery of lan- 
guage, which always fits the right word to the right thing, and 
that word always the simplest one, and the perfect ear for melody 
which makes it superfluous to set to music poetry which, read by 
the veriest schoolboy, makes music of itself. . . . 

How Mr. Tennyson can have attained the prodigal fulness of 
thought and imagery which distinguishes this poem, and especially 
the last canto, without his style ever becoming overloaded, seldom 
even confused, is perhaps one of the greatest marvels of the whole 
production. The songs themselves, which have been inserted 
between the cantos in the last edition ^ of the book, seem, perfect 
as they are, wasted and smothered among the surrounding fertility, 
— till we discover that they stand there, not merely for the sake 
of their intrinsic beauty, but serve to call back the reader's mind, 
at every pause in the tale of the Princess' folly, to that very 
healthy ideal of womanhood which she has spurned. 

At the end of the first canto, fresh from the description of the 
female college, with its professoresses, and hostleresses, and other 
Utopian monsters, we turn the page, and — 

As thro' the land at eve we went, 

And plucked the ripened ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 

And kissed again with tears. 

[ 1 The third edition (1850).] 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxvii 

And blessings on the falling-out 

That all the more endears, 
When we fall out with those we love, 

And kiss again with tears. 

For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave. 

We kissed again with tears. 

[Walters, Tennysott, pp. 63-68.] 

The Princess is particularly important to the student, affording 
him as it does an insight into Tennyson's peculiar, but not erratic, 
ideas of woman. 'She is the second, not the first.' No one 
reverenced more than he the daughters and mothers of the race. 
But at the same time no one was more strongly convinced than he 
that women must not be allowed to usurp the privileges of men. 

When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up. 
And topples down the scales ; but this is fixed 
As are the roots of earth and base of all : 
Man for the field and woman for the hearth ; 
Man for the sword and for the needle she ; 
Man with the head and woman with the heart ; 
Man to command and woman to obey ; 
All else confusion. 

In his early poems he had given us a series of skillfully drawn 
pictures of women of many types of beauty, pictures upon which 
we could gaze with delight, but the prototypes of which we do not 
yearn to know. But in The Princess he sets before us woman as 
she is, declares what she should aspire to, indicates her duty, in- 
forms us of her limits. 

The bearing and the training of a child 
Is woman's wisdom. 

Tennyson once admitted half regretfully that 'the public did not 
see that the child was the heroine ' of the poem, not Princess Ida. 
The fate of Psyche's babe is the pivot upon which the whole story 



xxviii INTRODUCTION. 

revolves. It is Psyche's babe who teaches Ida that she has a 
woman's heart, and such influence as a child may exercise, when 
all other influences fail, is revealed in the song beginning ' Home 
they brought her warrior dead.' Women are not to be hard and 
inexorable, are not to despise the love of worthy men, are not, 
indeed, to trust to themselves in their journeying along life's rough 
by-ways. They must yield themselves to the stronger, trust them- 
selves to the wiser, find support and protection in the enfolding 
arms of the mightier. Woman's part is ' sweet humility.' Her 
* cause is man's : they rise or sink together.' . . . 

The Princess was a protest against the rhapsodical falsity of 
such views as Shelley held. It showed woman her proper sphere, 
it forbade presumption and lawlessness, it silenced foolish discon- 
tent which had its origin in mistaken purposes, and it corrected 
the tendency of ' advanced ' womanhood to direct her aims to 
unprofitable and unappropriate ends. Tennyson's argument is 
that if woman be the lesser man she must be content with a lesser 
sphere and an inferior place — yet not with a sphere or place with- 
out dignity. She is not to be the drudge and slave, she is not to 
be ' something better than a dog, a little dearer than the horse,' 
but a being with a soul, a being ' dipped in angel instincts,' a being 
to whom man may be ' yoked in all exercise of noble end.' 

Tennyson has been greatly misunderstood upon this subject, 
especially by those who cannot discriminate between the false and 
true ideals of womanhood. As well treat women as playthings as 
treat them as divinities. We have to choose between the extrava- 
gant and impossible and the natural and practical. An ideal is 
none the worse for being attainable. The dissolute lyrists of the 
seventeenth century sang of women as goddesses and treated them 
like slaves. Tennyson takes a perfectly human view of the sex ; 
and perhaps in comparison with the views of many of his prede- 
cessors his opinions seem commonplace, lacking in warmth and 
enthusiasm. He has even been deemed to hold women in con- 
tempt •. Mr. Salt, with his mind fixed on Shelleyian ideals, thinks 
that The Princess., as a contribution to the discussion of female 
education, is ' sadly trivial and commonplace, being the merest 
caricature of the ideas it is supposed to combat, and a repetition 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxix 

of the immemorial fallacies by which men seek to divert attention 
from the real issue, culminating, of course, in the hypocritically- 
evasive injunction, " Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me." ' 
The poet's aim, as I conceive it, was to avoid in this, as in other 
questions, the falsehood of extremes. He perceived the true office 
of woman, and plainly indicated where her duty lay and where 
her powers could be best directed, A more glorious-seeming but 
utterly impossible ideal would have won for him unstinted praise, 
but what was Tennyson if not a plain dealer.? He abhorred 
woman's wrongs without subscribing fully to the modern pro- 
gramme of woman's rights. He had the candor to combat some 
of her claims and the courage to deny some of her pretensions. 
Less as a matter of principle than as a matter of propriety and 
expediency he showed where the impulsive Ida would fail. All 
men know and all women realize that there are inevitable limita- 
tions to the progress of the weaker sex in certain directions, and 
if the boundary line is overstepped, it is at the risk of losing cer- 
tain womanly attributes and leaving certain womanly functions 
unfulfilled. It is not those who talk most fulsomely of women's 
destiny who treat women most kindly. Laon is seldom just to 
Cythna ; but Ida was not the sport of a wanton or the slave of a 
libertine. Tennyson's love was pure and unimpassioned ; his type 
and ideal of the good and perfect woman was an Edith Aylmer, a 
gentle Enid, a Lilia Vivian, and a Dora. These were gracious, 
tender, loving, the best to love and the best to wed — models of 
English wives and mothers who remain unexcelled. Those who 
have gazed long upon the gaudy foliage of the tropics may at 
length fail to appreciate the delicate perfection of a pale pink rose ; 
and those who have been accustomed to the resplendent beauty 
and the ardors of Zuleika, Parisina, Cythna, Zelica, Haidee, and 
the other damsels ravishing as the houri and as remote as they 
from human nature, will be dissatisfied with a simple Letty meet- 
ing her lover by the lake, or with Maud who sends her swain 
a rose. Tennyson's women are a protest against the Oriental 
creatures who are deemed fit for a sultan's harem, and who, the 
early poets of the century would have us believe, exceed in charms 
and character our own English maids. But reaction has set 



XXX INTRODUCTION. 

in, and most of us are now prepared to echo the song of the 
Foresters : 

There is no land like England 

Where'er the light of day be; 
There are no wives like English wives 

So fair and chaste as they be. 
There is no land like England 

Where'er the light of day be ; 
There are no maids like English maids 

So beautiful as they be. 

Let us remember also with gratitude and admiration that Tenny- 
son was a woman's champion. He sought not only to save them 
from themselves by correcting distorted aims and subduing am- 
bition that was akin to rebellion against law and their ordained 
lot ; but he strove most earnestly to protect them from the awful 
wrongs of a corrupt age. How often was his voice raised against 
loveless marriages and against marriage forbidden when true love 
was inspired ! No more terrible sermon against the paltry pride 
that would sacrifice happiness to selfish, seeking ambition is to be 
found than in Ayhner's Fields where the fury of the poet is so 
great that he spares not the parents who have broken the heart of 
their child, but makes them pay a penalty heavier than death. . . . 
So firm a believer was Tennyson in holy marriage that he could 
tell of the happiness of the leper's wife ; he cherished women so 
much, felt so deeply for them in their feebleness, that he could 
rouse pity for the Magdalene ; ^ he hated so fiercely the cruelty of 
man that he did not scruple to defend the faithless wife of a vex- 
ing and loveless husband ; ^ and with all the burning scorn of a 
noble nature he denounced the iniquity of forcing a pure maiden 
to wed a rich and unscrupulous creditor of her needy father.^ 
Such a poet could have no debased and unworthy ideas of women ; 
and, even if his heroines may half contemptuously be classed as 
' quiet and domestic,' they are sweet and pure, faithful and true, 
and perfect in beauty because perfect in honor and virtue. As 

1 See Forlorn in the Demeter volume. 

2 See The Wreck in the Tiresias volume. 

3 See The Flight. 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxxi 

time goes on and the new light increases, it will be found that 
Tennyson's doctrines will bear the strongest of all tests. As in 
other matters, he spoke the plain and honest truth of women, their 
mission, and their future, heedless alike of praise and blame, but 
serenely confident of ultimate justification. 

[Bayard Taylor, Critical Essays, ^^. 14-19-] 

Tennyson's power of receiving strong and multiform impres- 
sions cannot be doubted ; but one who possesses so consciously 
the rarest qualities of his art, and so deliberately devotes his life 
to the perfection thereof, is exposed to a danger which he can 
never entirely recognize, and thus overcome. The artistic sense, 
so constantly and exquisitely refined, acquires an insidious mastery 
over the free idea, and partly conceals it under the very perfec- 
tion of illustration which is meant to present it in its full propor- 
tions. That higher sense which determines the relative value of 
such illustrations becomes dulled ; each asserts its equal right, and 
receives equal attention, so it carry a tempting epithet with it ; and 
the reader is constantly hurried back and forth, to and from the 
theme of the poem, by metaphors and descriptions so bright, keen, 
and true, that each must be separately enjoyed. We do not walk 
as in a path, towards some shining peak in the distance ; but as 
over a lush meadow, where new, enchanting blossoms, to the 
right and left, entice our steps hither and thither. A poetical con- 
ception requires perspective, balance of tints, concentration of the 
highest light, no less than a picture ; where, from beginning to end, 
every detail is presented with equal prominence and elaborated 
with equal skill, there is no resting-place for the mind, as, in a 
similar picture, there is none for the eye. I do not mean that this 
is a pervading fault of Tennyson ; his instinct is too true to allow 
it to vitiate his most earnest work; but his methods of labor do 
not allow him wholly to escape it. There are few forms of knowl- 
edge which he has neglected, and few which he has not used in 
the service of poetry. He rarely mistakes through deficient per- 
ception, but very frequently through correct perception asserting 
itself without regard to its proper place and value. All objects 
present themselves to him with such distinctness of illustration 



xxxii INTRODUCTION. 

that he forgets the unfamiliarity of the reader with their quali- 
ties. . . . The poem \The Princess\ in fact, abounds with in- 
stances where the expression as a whole is weakened and confused 
by the author's tendency to make each particular complete, without 
reference to its relation to others. 



[Dawson, A Study (ist ed.), pp. 54-57.] 

The poem of The Princess^ as a work of art, is the most com- 
plete and satisfying of all Tennyson's works. It possesses a 
play of fancy, of humor, of pathos, and of passion which give it 
variety ; while the feeling of unity is unbroken throughout. It 
is full of passages of the rarest beauty and most exquisite work- 
manship. The songs it contains are unsurpassed in English 
literature. The diction is drawn from the treasure-house of old 
English poetry, — from Chaucer, from Shakespeare and the poets 
of the Elizabethan age. The versification is remarkable for its 
variety ; while the rhythm, in stateliness and expression, is mod- 
eled upon Milton. There are passages which, in power over 
language to match sound with sense, are not excelled by anything 
in Paradise Lost for strength, or in Milton's minor poems for 
sweetness. The poem abounds also in evidences of the prophetic 
insight which has already been referred to as the mark of a true 
poet. In the year 1847, long before Darwin had commenced the 
present great revolution in scientific thought, evolutionary theo- 
ries were propounded by the poet in the imaginary halls of his 
female university. Huxley himself could not have sketched more 
vividly than the Lady Psyche the progressive development of the 
world from the primal cosmic vapor. The Princess, with the 
accuracy taught only recently by the spectroscope, calls the sun 
' a nebulous star.' When she gets her mind off the brooch, she 
becomes really profound in her analysis of our notions of creation 
as stages of successive acts. Our minds, she teaches, are so 
constituted that we must of 7iecessity apprehend everything in 
the form and aspect of successive time ; but, in the Almighty 
fiat, '■Let there be light,'' the whole of the complex potentialities 
of the universe were in fact hidden. 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxxiii 

Not only is the poem satisfying in these respects. It breathes 
throughout that faith and hope in the future which make Tenny- 
son the poet of a progressive age. For many excellent persons 
this universe is moribund. They can take pleasure in thinking 
that the Creator, once more foiled, is on the eve of angrily 
breaking up this world and beginning it all over again. Such 
is not the philosophy of our poet. He speaks in his own person 
in the epilogue. He says : 

For me the genial day, the happy crowd, 
The sport half -science, fill me with a faith. 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs ; there is a hand that guides. 

This faith runs through all his works — nor is it anywhere more 
beautifully expressed than in his very latest volume, in the second 
and third stanzas of The Children's Hospital. 

Still the poem of The Princess is not an exhaustive solution 
of the question treated. All men cannot or do not marry. 
Millions of women pass unwedded through life. In many cases 
the sweetness of their nature overflows in general usefulness to 
others, in some cases it sours with disappointment. Millions of 
women have gone to dishonored graves — ' even God's providence 
seeming estranged ' — victims to an artificial state of society. 
Here are questions for more favored ones to consider of pro- 
founder import than sunflowers or china pigs. Of what avail is 
mere knowledge before these profound social and moral prob- 
lems? The ultimate outcome of all knowledge is mystery. The 
sources of being are hidden behind an impenetrable veil. We 
juggle with words and play with them as children with counters, 
getting out of them such meanings only as we ourselves first put 
in. The intellect is finite, but the affections are infinite. We 
know in part, and we prophesy in part. Our prophecies shall 
fail and our knowledge vanish in a clearer dawn, but Love^ of 
which woman is the priestess, abideth forever. 



xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 



[Dixon, Tennyson Primer, pp. 133-140.] 

The latter-day poets assure us, and the latter-day critics like- 
wise, that art is all in all, that poetry is style. We have critics 
not a few who regard sweetness and strength as attributes of 
style, and are ignorant that they are not attributes of style, but 
attributes of mind and character, expressed in style. How fortu- 
nate that in Tennyson the balance was preserved — the balance 
between the emotions and the will, between the heart and head, 
between what is said and the manner of saying it ! Because 
Tennyson's style is the expression of character, and not a palace 
of emptiness, because he is throughout sane and everywhere 
guided by a wise knowledge of the poet's craft, he is a true and 
great artist. To compare him with his successors is to gauge 
the true measure of his performance. With his successors the 
balance is lost, and when a man or a poet has nothing to say, 
to think that it can be said finely, what hallucination ! To think 
that the accent of freshness can be obtained by torturing lan- 
guage, that the great effects in poetry, the effects of Sophocles, 
of Dante, and of Shakespeare, their intense significance, can be 
accounted for by a skill in words, an artisan's dexterity ! The 
great effects in poetry are straightforward effects ; the great 
effects of poetry are those in which the emphasis of expression 
corresponds to some emphasis of thought, some intensity of feel- 
ing. And it is because in Tennyson the artist rarely outran the 
man that we have confidence in him. If you ask me for the 
secret of Tennyson's hold upon the mind of his generation, I 
shall answer you with assurance that it lies in his accent of 
sincerity, it lies in his literary integrity, in a wholesomeness in 
his art. For this integrity we value him, and for this the future 
will value him. The poetry that cannot make for beauty and 
grace and harmony in human life, since it has practically no 
bearing upon life at all, such poetry is as vain a thing as the 
jargon of the critics who commend it, and as transitory. 

As the poetic artist of the nineteenth century who best knew 
his own limitations, and in whom the balance, the compromise 
between form and matter, in which poetry consists, is best pre- 



CRITICAL COMMENTS. xxxv 

served, as poetic chronicler of the mental life of his time, and 
as the interpreter of that spirit of intellectual hesitation which was 
characteristic of his contemporaries and leads to eclecticism in 
matters of faith, Tennyson will be remembered. And he will 
be remembered, although the greatness of his work must be 
looked for elsewhere than in its scope or imaginative power. 
The large comprehensiveness, the wide-eyed vision that takes 
in the spectacle of human life in its vast whole and in the com- 
plexity of its parts, this did not belong to him, nor did he share 
in all the joys and sorrows of mankind. . . . 

To the color-school of English poetry, to the lineage of the 
poets of romance, Tennyson belonged. He did not care to draw 
in outHne, to impress by the naked grandeur of conception. 
From the first, like Keats, he held that poetry should surprise 
by a fine excess, by a richness and profusion of beauties, that 
it should be a veritable cloth of gold. From the first he was 
for such accessories as should lead the senses captive, and en- 
thrall the reader with infinite vistas of delight. Yet his is not 
the bewildering charm of Spenser's fairyland, the luxuriant under- 
growth of beauty in enchanted forests. Rather it is the ordered 
beauty of a noble English garden, of the English landscape that 
he loved so well. It was said by Wordsworth of Tennyson : 
' He is not much in sympathy with what I should myself most 
value in my attempts — viz., the spirituality with which I have 
endeavored to view the material universe, and the moral relations 
under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary appear- 
ances.' It is true that Tennyson was not much in sympathy 
with such attempts. Few poets indeed have kept with Nature 
a closer companionship ; her sights and sounds were his most 
familiar friends. To this close companionship we owe the skil- 
ful appropriateness of his backgrounds, and the delicate accuracy 
of their form and color. Tennyson observed, and observed nar- 
rowly ; observed indeed with something akin to the trained scien- 
tific eye. There is no need to adduce from his poetry passages 
to prove how loving and how close an eye he kept upon the 
world around him. . . . But for all this Wordsworth was right. 
Tennyson did not, in the same degree as Wordsworth, * see into 



XXX vi INTRODUCTION. 

the life of things,' and when the elder poet's imagination would 
have kindled into the flame of unquenchable poesy, Tennyson 
remained a draughtsman and a colorist, but the draughtsman and 
colorist who is perhaps the greatest of English idyllic poets. . . . 
You will seek in vain in Tennyson for the larger elements, 
the far horizons of thought, the wide and gracious spaces, the 
unimagined depths, the austere yet tranquilizing sadness, the 
severe unbroken calm, the magnanimities of the greatest poetry. 
You will seek in vain for the presence of the higher imagination. 
The popular verdict will not have it so. It will affirm that none 
of the qualities of the highest poetry are absent from Tennyson's 
verse. But for those acquainted, however slightly, with the litera- 
ture of the world's past, passage after passage will rise to mind, 
passage after passage beside which there is nothing of Tennyson's 
to be placed. 



III. TENNYSON'S LETTER ON THE PRINCESS. 

[ This letter, * the most important ajtd interesting- ever written by Tennyson in con- 
nection with his poetry,^ was written to Mr, S. E. Dawson, after the appearance 
of his excellent Study. ^ 

Aldworth, Haslemere, 
Surrey, Nov. 21st, 1882. 
Dear Sir : 

I thank you for your able and thoughtful essay on The Prin- 
cess. You have seen, amongst other things, that if women ever were 
to play such freaks, the burlesque and the tragic might go hand 
in hand. 

I may tell you that the songs were not an afterthought. Before 
the first edition came out I deliberated with myself whether I 
should put songs in between the separate divisions of the poem; 
again, I thought, the poem will explain itself ; but the public did 
not see that the child, as you say, was the heroine of the piece, 
and at last I conquered my laziness and inserted them. You 
would be still more certain that the child was the true heroine if, 
instead of the first song as it now stands. 

As thro' the land at eve we went, 



TENNYSON'S LETTER ON THE PRINCESS, xxxvil 

I had printed the first song which I wrote, ' The losing of the 
child.' The child is sitting on the bank of a river, and playing 
with flowers; a flood comes down; a dam has been broken 
through; the child is borne down by the flood; the whole village 
distracted; after a time the flood has subsided; the child is thrown 
safe and sound again upon the bank, and all the women are in 
raptures. I quite forget the words of the ballad, but I think I 
may have it somewhere. 

Your explanatory notes are very much to the purpose, and I 
do not object to your finding parallelisms. They must always 
recur. A man (a Chinese scholar) some time ago wrote to me, 
saying that in an unknown, untranslated Chinese poem there were 
two whole lines of mine, almost word for word. Why not ? Are 
not human eyes all over the world looking at the same objects, 
and must there not consequently be coincidences of thought and 
impressions and expressions ? It is scarcely possible for any one 
to say or write anything in this late time of the world to which, in 
the rest. of the literature of the world, a parallel could not some- 
where be found. But when you say that this passage or that was 
suggested by Wordsworth or Shelley or another, I demur, and 
more, I wholly disagree. There was a period in my life when, 
as an artist — Turner, for instance — takes rough sketches of 
landskip, etc.. in order to work them eventually into some great 
picture, so I was in the habit of chronicling, in four or five words 
or more, whatever might strike me as picturesque in nature. I 
never put these down, and many and many a line has gone away 
on the north wind, but some remain, e.g.: 

. A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight.^ 

Suggestion : The sea one night at Torquay, when Torquay was 
the most lovely sea-village in England, tho' now a smoky town. 
The sky was covered with thin vapor, and the moon was behind it. 

A great black cloud 
Drag inward from the deep.2 

Suggestion : A coming storm seen from the top of Snowdon. 

[1 Princess I. 244.] 

[2 Princess VII. 21-22, not quite accurately.] 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION. 

In the Idylls of the King : 

with all 
Its stormy crests that smote against the skies.^ 

Suggestion : A storm which came upon us in the middle of the 
North Sea. 

As the water-lily starts and slides.^ 

Suggestion: Water-lilies in my own pond, seen on a gusty day 
with my own eyes. They did start and slide in the sudden puffs 
of wind, till caught and stayed by the tether of their own stalks — 
quite as trice as Wordsworth's simile, and more in detail. 

A wild wind shook — 

Follow, follow, thou shalt win. 

Suggestion: I was walking in the New Forest. A wind did 
arise, and 

Shake the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 
Of the wild wood together.^ 

The wind, I believe, was a west wind, but, because I wished the 
Prince to go south, I turned the wind to the south, and naturally 
the wind said, ' Follow.' I believe the resemblance which you 
note is just a chance one. Shelley's lines are not familiar to me, 
tho', of course, if they occur in the Pro?netheus, I must have read 
them. 

I could multiply instances, but I will not bore you; and far 
indeed am I from asserting that books, as well as nature, are not, 
and ought not to be, suggestive to the poet. I am sure that I 
myself, and many others, find a peculiar charm in those passages 
of such great' masters as Virgil or Milton where they adopt the 
creation of a bygone poet, and reclothe it, more or less, according 
to their own fancy. But there is, I fear, a prosaic set growing 
up among us, editors of booklets, bookworms, index-hunters, or 
men of great memories and no imagination, who impute them- 

P Lancelot and Elaine 483, with ' smote ' for * smoke.'] 

[2 Princess IV. 236.] 

[3 Pi'incess I. 96-99, not quite accurately.] 



TENNYSON'S LETTER ON THE PRINCESS, xxxix 

selves to the poet, and so believe that he, too, has no imagination, 
but is for ever poking his nose between the pages of some old 
volmne in order to see what he can appropriate. They will not 
allow one to say ' Ring the bells,' without finding that we have 
taken it from Sir P. Sydney — or even to use such a simple 
expression as the ocean ' roars ' without finding out the precise 
verse in Homer or Horace from which we have plagiarized it 
(fact !). 

I have known an old fish-wife, who had lost two sons at sea, 
clench her fist at the advancing tide on a stormy day and cry out : 
' Ay ! roar, do ! how I hates to see thee show thy white teeth ! ' 
Now if I had adopted her exclamation and put it into the mouth of 
some old woman in one of my poems, I dare say the critics would 
have thought it original enough, but would most likely have 
advised me to go to Nature for my old women, and not to my own 
imagination; and indeed it is a strong figure. 

Here is another little anecdote about suggestion. When I was 
about twenty or twenty-one I went on a tour to the Pyrenees. 
Lying among these mountains before a waterfall that comes down 
one thousand or twelve hundred feet, I sketched it (according to 
my custom then) in these words: 

Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn.i 

When I printed this a critic informed me that ' lawn ' was the 
material used in theatres to imitate a waterfall, and graciously 
added: ' Mr. T. should not go to the boards of a theatre, but to 
Nature herself, for his suggestions.' And I had gone to Nature 
herself. I think it is a moot point whether, if I had known how 
that effect was produced on the stage, I should have ventured to 
publish the line. 

I find that I have written, quite contrary to my custom, a letter, 
when I had merely intended to thank you for your interesting 
commentary. 

Thanking you again for it, I beg you to believe me 

Very faithfully yours, 

A. Tennyson. 

[1 The Lotos-Eaters 1 1 .] 



xl TNTK OD UC TION. 

P.S. — By the bye, you are wrong about ' the tremulous isles of 
light'; 1 they are ' isles of light,' spots of sunshine coming through 
the leaves, and seeming to slide from one to the other, as the pro- 
cession of girls ' moves under shade.'' And surely the ' beard- 
blown ' goat ^ involves a sense of the wdnd blowing the beard on 
the height of the ruined pillar. 



IV. ILLUSTRATIONS OF METRICAL PECULIARITY. 

[Corson, Primer of English Verse, pp. 56-63.] 

Some of the best examples are found in Tennyson's ' Princess ' 
and ' Idylls of the King.' Every ripple in his verse, caused by a 
shifting of the accent, or by additional unaccented syllables, 
imparts a motived logical or emotional emphasis. Such emphasis 
is often increased by an accompanying organic alliteration. Vari- 
ous other interesting metrical effects are exhibited in the following 
examples. 

Brake with a /^ast of trumpets from the gate. 

while the twangling violin 
Struck up with S oldie r-lad^/>, a)id overhead, 

The abrupt vowels and final abrupt consonants of the initial 
words, ' Struck up,' aid the effect. 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed; 

The abrupt vowel and consonant in ' Pet- ' aid the effect of the 
initial axx. 

he started on his feet, 
Tore the King's letter, snowed it ^own, and ren/ 
The wonder of the loom thro' warp and wool 
From sfAxX. to sJmi ; 

but ' No ! ' 
Roared the rough King, * you shall not ; we ourself 
Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dQ2id 
In iron gauntlets ; brea/?- the council u/.' 

[1 Princess VI. 65.] [2 Princess IV. 60.] 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF METRICAL PECULIARITY, xli 

We rode 
Many a /ong /eague back to the North. At last 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign, 

By two sphere lamps blazojied like Heaven and Earth 

With (fc/zstellation and with c^wtinent, 

Above an entry ; 

Z^rink o'eep, until the habits of the slave, 
The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 
And slander, die. 

She ended here, and beckoned us ; the rest 

Parted ; and, glovi^ing full-faced welcome, she 

Began to address us, and was moving on 

In gratulation, till as when a boat 

Tacks, and the slackened %2S\. flaps, all her voice 

Faltering and Ruttering in her throat, she cried, 

My brother. 

I would be that for ever which I seem, 
Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, 

elegies 
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long 
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time 
Sparkle for ever ; 

An extra effect is imparted to the effect of the ax foot, 
* Sparkle,' by the additional light syllable '-er ' of 'ever,' before the 
break. 

I learnt more from her in a flash. 
Than if my brainpan were an empty hull, 
And every Muse tumbled a science in. 

The abrupt word ' in ' receiving the ictus, adds to the effect of 
the ax foot, ' tumbled,' 

once or twice I thought to roar 
To \ixeak my oSxain, to sh^y^^ my vaane ; but thou, 
Modulate me, soul of z^^incing mimicTy ! 



xlii INTRODUCTION. 

While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 
Groaning for power, and ro//ing thro' the court 
A /ong me/odious thunder to the jound 
Of j-olemn pj-alms, and silver /itanies, 

There while we stood beside the fount, and watched 
Or seemed to watch the danc/?/^ bubble, approached 
Melissa. 

Here the exceptional foot is an xax. 

And up we came to where the river sloped 

To plunge in Q.z.\.aract, shattering on <^lack /blocks 

A <^readth of thunder. 

we wound 
About the cliffs, the copses, out and in. 
Hammering and clinking, c\\2i\.tering stony names 
Of shale and hornblend, rag and trap and tuff, 
Amygdaloid and trachyte, tiil the Sim 
Grew broader toward his death and fell, and all 
The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 

Note with what beauty the italicized verses come in after the 
' stony names,' 

Then she ' Let some one sing to us ; lightliox wove 
The winutes fledged with wusic ; ' 

So sweet a z'oice and z^ague, fatal to men. 

Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes 

To be fl^rtwdled, no, but living wills, and sphered 

Whole in ourselves and owed to none. 

hoof by hoof. 
And every hoof a knell to my desires. 
Clanged on the bridge ; 

For blind with rage she missed the plank, and rolled 
In the rivtx. Out I sprang from glow to gloom ; 
There whirled her 7vhite robe like a (blossomed branch 
Ra/>t to the horrible fall ; a glance I gave, 
No more; but woman-vested as I was, 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF METRICAL PECULIARITY, xliii 

Plunged ; and the flood drew ; yet I caught her; then 
Oarhig one arm, and bearing in my left 
The weight of all the hopes of half the world, 
Strove to buffet to land in vain. 

The metrical effects of this passage are especially notable. 
Note effect of the xxa foot, ' In the riv-,' coming in without a 
pause, after the prolongable word ' rolled ' ; the alliterations in the 
third verse; the initial ax feet of the fourth, sixth, and seventh 
verses; the very effective xxa foot, '-rible fall,' in the fourth 
verse; the suggestion of struggle in the two ax feet of the last 
verse. 

A little space was left between the horns, 
Thro' which I clambered o'er at top with pain. 
Dropped on the sward, and up the linden walks, 

Note, too, the effect of the abrupt words, ' Dropped ' and 'up.' 

I heard the/uffed/ursuer; at mine ear 
Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not. 
And j-ecre^ /augh/er ^ick/ed a// my jou/. 

above her drooped a lamp, 
And made the single jewel on her <^row 
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, 
Prophet of storm. 

and close behind her stood 
Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men, 

As of some fire against a stormy cloud, 
"When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick 
Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens; 

her breast, 
Beaten with some great passion at her heart, 
Palpitated^ her hand shook, and we heard 
In the dead hush the papers that she held 
Rustle ; 

they to and fro 
Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, 

and the wild birds on the light 
Dash themselves deSid. 



xliv INTRODUCTION. 

Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause, 
Die ; 

She, ending, waved her hands ; thereat the crowd 
Muttering, dissolved ; 

While I listened, came 
On a sud^^n the weird seizure and the doubt ; 

Breathing and sounding <5eauteous /battle, comes 
With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 
Among the women, snares them by the score, 
F/attered and Jlnstered, wins, tho' i/ashed with r/eath 
He reddens what he kisses ; 

but other thoughts than Peace 
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares, 
And squadrons of the Prince, tranipliiig the flowers 
With clamor; for among them rose a cry 
As if to greet the King ; they made a halt ; 
The horses yelled ; they clashed their arms ; the drum 
Beat ; merrily-blowmg shrilled the martial fife ; 
And in the blast and bray of the long horn 
And serpent-throated bugle, undulat*?^ 
The bann.?r ; anon to meet us lightly pranced 
Three captains out ; 

and standing like a stately Pine 
Set in a cataract on an island-crag. 
When storm is on the heights, and right and left 
Sucked from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
The torrents, dashed to the vale ; 

till a rout of saucy boys 
Brake on us at our books, and marred our peace, 
Masked like our maids, blustering I know not what 
Of insolence and love. 

yet w^hatsoe'er you do, 
Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. O dear 
Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF METRICAL PECULIARITY, xlv 

and once more 
The trumpet, and again ; at which the storm 
Of gaXloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 
And riders front to front, 

The large blows rained, as here and everywhere 

He rode the mellay, lord of the 7'ingmg lists, 

And all the plain, — brand, mace, and j/^aft, and shield — 

Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged 

With hammers ; 

came 
As comes a pillar of electric cloud, 
Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains, 
And shdidowing down the champaign till it strikes 
On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits, 
And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 
Reels, and the herdsmen cry ; 

by them went 
The enamored air sighing, and on their curls 
Yxom the high tree the blossom wavering fell, 
And over them the XxqxcmIous isles of light 
Slided, they moving under shade ; 

Thro' open field into the lists they wound 
Timorously ; 

Steps with a tender foot, light as on air, 

Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye, 
Silent ; 

and when she saw 
The haggard father's face, and reverend beard 
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood 
Of his own son, shuddej-ed, a twitch of pain 
Tortured her mouth, 

to them the doors gave way 
Groaning, 

And on they moved and gained the hall, and there 
Rested ; 



xlvi INTRODUCTION. 

she said 
Brokenly, that she knew it, she had failed 
In sweet humility ; 

The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke, 
Life. 

The ax foot, ' beating,' gains additional effect from the mono- 
syllabic words before and after it. The same is true of the 
preceding ax foot. 

the walls 
Blackened about us, bdAs wheeled and owls whooped. 



THE PRINCESS 

A MEDLEY. 



PROLOGUE. 

Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day 
Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun 
Up to the people ; thither flocked at noon 
His tenants, wife and child, and thither half 

1. Sir Walter Vivian. ' The prototype of Sir Walter Vivian was 
Edmund Henry Lushington, and his son, " an Edmund too " (to 
retain the idea and change the name), became the husband of 
Cecilia Tennyson, whose marriage is the theme of the concluding 
stanzas of In Memoriajn. The poet's tribute to his brother-in-law, 
" the most learned man in England after Thirlwall," will be immedi- 
ately recalled : 

And thou art worthy, full of power ; 
As gentle, liberal-minded, great, 
Consistent ; wearing all that weight 
Of learning lightly like a flower.' 

(Walters, Tennyson^ p. 63.) 

It has been said that Sir John Simeon, of Swainston, in the Isle 
of Wight, was the original of Sir Walter Vivian, but this view is 
not so well supported. See the description in Con. 41 ff., and the 
note there. 

2. Lawns. Glades or open spaces among or between woods; 
natural pasture-land. The American lawn is not to be thought of. 
Cf. sloping pasture, 55. 



2 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

The neighboring borough with their Institute, 5 

Of which he was the patron. I was there 

From college, visiting the son — the son 

A Walter too — with others of our set, 

Five others : we were seven at Vivian Place. 

And me that morning Walter showed the house, lo 

Greek, set with busts ; from vases in the hall 
Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names. 
Grew side by side ; and on the pavement lay 
Carved stones of the Abbey-ruin in the park, 
Huge Ammonites, and the first bones of Time; iS 

And on the tables every clime and age 
Jumbled together : celts and calumets, 
Claymore and snowshoe, toys in lava, fans 
Of sandal, amber, ancient rosaries, 

5. Institute. Mechanics' Institute. What would this be ? 

8. A Walter too. See note on i. 

g. Seven. How many cantos are there of the story proper? 

11. Greek. What are some of the characteristics of this style of 
domestic architecture ? Designate a house of this style in your 
vicinity, and describe the exterior. When did this style become 
common in England ? 

12. Lovelier than their names. Explain. 

15. Ammonites. Fossil shells, usually ornamented outside with 
ribs, knobs, spines, etc., while the under layer is pearly. There is a 
fossil mollusk called cornu Ammotiis, the horn of the god Ammon, 
who was represented with a ram's head; hence the name. — First 
bones of Time. Have you ever seen any in a museum ? 

17. Jumbled. Prefiguring the 'medley.' — Celts. Prehistoric 
weapons of stone or bronze, somewhat resembling a chisel or an axe. 
— Calumets. Indian tobacco-pipes with stone bowl, and long reed 
stem ornamented with eagles' feathers. 

18. Claymore. A heavy two-handed and double-edged broad- 
sword, used by the Scottish Highlanders. 

19. Amber. What is its color.? What are sometimes found 
embedded in it ? What is its connection with the discovery of elec- 
tricity } — Rosaries. Describe. 



prologue] a medley. 3 

Laborious orient ivory sphere in sphere, 20 

The cursed Malayan crease, and battle-clubs 
From the isles of palm ; and higher on the walls, 
Betwixt the monstrous horns of elk and deer, 
His own forefathers' arms and armor hung. 

And 'This,' he said, 'was Hugh's at Agincourt ; 25 

And that was old Sir Ralph's at Ascalon : 
A good knight he ! We keep a chronicle 
With all about him ' — which he brought, and I 
Dived in a hoard of tales that dealt with knights, 
Half-legend, half-historic, counts and kings 3° 

Who laid about them at their wills and died ; 
And, mixed with these, a lady, one that armed 
Her own fair head, and sallying thro' the gate. 
Had beat her foes with slaughter from her walls. 

20. A series of ivory balls of various sizes, one inside another, or 
carved with extreme delicacy and elaborate design by the Chinese 
and Burmese. Notice the music of the lines, as dependent upon 
the preponderance of vowels and following liquids ; then the 
rounder, bolder c's, followed by the thinner ^'s. Is the of ivory 
as much stressed as that of laborioiis and orient — is there not a 
weakening of the sound before it passes over into e ? How is this 
paralleled by the succession of balls ? Is this a chance effect or a 
studied one ? In this respect does it suggest the artistry of the 
balls themselves.'' See if you discover anything else in the poem 
like this wonderful artistry. 

21. Crease. A dagger or short sword, generally with a waved 
blade and oblique handle. See a picture under the spelling Kj-is in 
the Standard Dictionary. Why ' cursed ' ? What sort of a wound 
would the blade make ? 

25. And 'This.' An easy transition. — Agincourt. Have you 
ever read Shakespeare's Henry V. ? If not, you can there gain a 
new pleasure, and at the same time learn of the Battle of Agincourt 

(1415)- 

26. Ascalon. Here Richard Coeur-de-Lion won a victory over 
the Saracens of Saladin (1192). 



4 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

' O miracle of women,' said the book, 35 

' O noble heart who, being strait-besieged 
By this wild king to force her to his wish. 
Nor bent, nor broke, nor shunned a soldier's death. 
But now when all was lost, or seemed as lost — 
Her stature more than mortal in the burst 4° 

Of sunrise, her arm lifted, eyes on fire — 
Brake with a blast of trumpets from the gate, 
And, falling on them like a thunderbolt, 
She trampled some beneath her horses' heels. 
And some were whelmed with missiles of the wall, 45 

And some were pushed with lances from the rock. 
And part were drowned within the whirling brook : 
O miracle of noble womanhood ! ' 

35-49. Not in the first edition. Probably added to foreshadow 
the more heroic parts of the story proper. 

36. Strait-besieged. Closely beset by an army. 

38. Cf. V. 170. 

39. Cf. VI. 6. 

40. More than mortal. So Bedivere, in the Morte d' Arthur, 
looked 

Larger than human on the frozen hills. 

Cf. Paradise Lost IV. 985-8 ; In Memoriam LXXXVII. y] ; but 
especially Princess IV. 469 ff.; V. 336 ff. 

42. Note the shattering sounds, and study how they are produced. 
Is this, perhaps, the reason why the poet substitutes brake for the 
broke of 38 ? Listen to the rending in Sir Galahad : 

The splintered spear-shafts crack and fly. 

See p. xl. 

44-46. Some . . . some . . . some. Suppose instead And some, 
the poet had written Others, would the effect have been better? Cf. 
II. 56-58 ; IV. 284-8 ; VII. 91-97. 

47. And part. Why not And some? — The whirling brook. 
Cf. IV. 160 ff. 

48. Reverts to 35, but with a fine sonorous close. 



prologue] a medley. S 

So sang the gallant glorious chronicle ; 
And, I all rapt in this, ' Come out/ he said, 50 

' To the Abbey ; there is Aunt Elizabeth, 
And sister Lilia with the rest.' We went 
(I kept the book and had my finger in it) 
Down thro' the park ; strange was the sight to me ; 
For all the sloping pasture murmured, sown 55 

With happy faces and with holiday. 
There moved the multitude, a thousand heads : 
The patient leaders of their Institute 
Taught them with facts. One reared a font of stone 
And drew, from butts of water on the slope, 60 

The fountain of the moment, playing, now 
A twisted snake, and now a rain of pearls. 
Or steep-up spout whereon the gilded ball 
Danced hke a wisp ; and somewhat lower down 
A man with knobs and wires and vials fired 65 

A cannon ; Echo answered in her sleep 
From hollow fields ; and here were telescopes 
For azure views ; and there a group of girls 
In circle waited, whom the electric shock 
Dislinked with shrieks and laughter ; round the lake 70 

A little clock-work steamer paddling plied, 

50. An abrupt transition. From what century to what ? From 
what state of society to what ? 

51. To the Abbey. Suppose the poet had conducted us at once 
to the Abbey, 1. 91, would the intermixture of epochs and moods, 
the medley, have been so complete ? 

55. Pasture murmured. Cf. IV. 416. 

56. A hendiadys. Will your Rhetoric help you to explain this 
word? There is another instance in VI. 80. 

59. Taught them with facts. The poet's irony, one suspects, 
for he used to say, as reported by Knowles : * Poetry is a great deal 
truer than fact.' 

63. Steep-up. Try to substitute a good synonym for this. 

64. Wisp. Will-o'-the-wisp. 



6 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

And shook the lilies : perched about the knolls 

A dozen angry models jetted steam ; 

A petty railway ran ; a fire-balloon 

Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves 75 

And dropped a fairy parachute, and passed : 

And there thro' twenty posts of telegraph 

They flashed a saucy message to and fro 

Between the mimic stations ; so that sport 

Went hand in hand with science ; otherwhere 80 

Pure sport ; a herd of boys with clamor bowled 

And stumped the wicket ; babies rolled about 

Like tumbled fruit in grass ; and men and maids 

Arranged a country dance, and flew thro' light 

And shadow, while the twangling violin 85 

Struck up with ' Soldier-laddie,' and overhead 

The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime 

Made noise with bees and breeze from end to end. 

Strange was the sight, and smacking of the time ; 
And long we gazed, but satiated at length 90 

Came to the ruins. High-arched and ivy-clasped, 

80. Otherwhere. Cf. VI. 357. 

82. Stumped. Playing cricket. How is cricket played ? 

85-86. See p. xl. 

86. ' Soldier-laddie.' A Scotch song. 

87. Note how the account of the scientific diversions, whose pro- 
saic character the poet has been taxed to disguise, here passes over 
into poetry. Where did the prose stop and the poetry begin to re- 
appear? — Ambrosial. A Homeric word, meaning ' divine ' ; here, 
divinely fragrant. Cf. IV. 6. 

In this line and the next mark the b (r), /, and vowel alliterations ; 
the liquids ; and the resonant 2's : ambroj-ial, noij-e, beej-, freeze. 
Cf. VII. 207. 

90. Do not give the long sound to the second a of satiated ; the 
English do not. 



prologue] a medley. 7 

Of finest Gothic lighter than a fire, 

Thro' one wide chasm of time and frost they gave 

The park, the crowd, the house ; but all within 

The sward was trim as any garden lawn : 95 

And here we lit on Aunt Elizabeth, 

And Lilia with the rest, and lady friends 

From neighbor seats ; and there was Ralph himself, 

A broken statue propped against the wall. 

As gay as any. Lilia, wild with sport, 100 

Half child half woman as she was, had wound 

A scarf of orange around the stony helm. 

And robed the shoulders in a rosy silk. 

That made the old warrior from his ivied nook 

92. Have you ever seen a picture of a ruined Gothic abbey? In 
what respects does Gothic differ from Greek architecture ? "What 
was the palmy period of Gothic ? Does the introduction of the 
ruins add another element to the medley ? 

93. Chasm of time and frost. Explain. — Gave. Showed; a 
Gallicism. Cf. I. 226. Tennyson is fond of viewing a landscape in 
this way ; thus in Ulysses : 

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' 
Gleams that untraveled world. 

Is it Gothic or Greek architecture that Tennyson is describing in 

The Palace of Art? 

Likewise the deep-set windows, stained and traced, 

Would seem slow-flaming crimson fires 
From shadowed grots of arches interlaced, 

And tipped with frost-like spires. 

94. The park, the crowd, the house. Are these above or below 
the site of the ruins ? 

95. Lawn. Of the same sort as in 2 ? 

98. Seats. Country seats. — Ralph. See 26. 
102. New elements of contrast, as again in 105 : 'near his tomb a 
feast.' 
104. What metrical peculiarity ? 



8 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

Glow like a sunbeam ; near his tomb a feast 105 

Shone, silver-set; about it lay the guests, 

And there we joined them : then the maiden Aunt 

Took this fair day for text, and from it preached 

An universal culture for the crowd, 

And all things great ; but we, un worthier, told no 

Of college : he had climbed across the spikes. 

And he had squeezed himself betwixt the bars. 

And he had breathed the proctor's dogs ; and one 

Discussed his tutor, rough to common men, 

But honeying at the whisper of a lord ; 115 

And one the Master, as a rogue in grain 

Veneered with sanctimonious theory. 

But while they talked, above their heads I saw 
The feudal warrior lady-clad ; which brought 

105. The picnic lunch of Aiidlcy Court is described at much 
greater length (Bayard Taylor criticizes this in his essay on Tenny- 
son). Why is it so briefly touched upon here ? 

106. Silver-set. 'A fact nobody cares at all to know' (Bayard 
Taylor, Critical Essays, p. 17). Cf. IV. 17. 

109. A preparation for the collegiate life of the poem"; cf. 11 1 ff. 

III. He. Like Lat. ille. 

113. Breathed the proctor's dogs. 'Tired out in the chase the 
proctor's assistants who pursue students to arrest them, and are 
called in college slang "bull-dogs." The proctor is a subordinate 
officer of college discipline ' (Woodberry). 

115. Honeying. Becoming sweet or bland; a peculiar Tenny- 
sonian use. 

116. Master. President of a college in an English university. — 
Grain. Innate character. * The word " grain " has had a curious 
history, which is given at length by Marsh {Lectures on the English 
Language III.); from having originally signified a seed or kernel 
from which a peculiarly rich and strong dye was procured, it has 
come to be commonly used in modern parlance to denote the fibre 
or texture of any substance ' (Wallace). 

118. Above their heads. Is the statue standing on the ground ? 

119. Lady-clad. Meaning.? 



prologue] a medley. 9 

My book to mind ; and opening this I read 120 

Of old Sir Ralph a page or two that rang 

With tilt and tourney ; then the tale of her 

That drove her foes with slaughter from her walls, 

And much I praised her nobleness, and ' Where,' 

Asked Walter, patting Lilia's head (she lay 125 

Beside him), ' lives there such a woman now ? ' 

Quick answered Lilia ' There are thousands now 
Such women, but convention beats them down ; 
It is but bringing up ; no more than that ; 
You men have done it ; how I hate you all ! 130 

Ah, were I something great ! I wish I were 
Some mighty poetess, I would shame you then. 
That love to keep us children ! O I wish 
That I were some great princess, I would build 
Far off from men a college like a man's, 135 

And I would teach them all that men are taught ; 
We are twice as quick ! ' And here she shook aside 
The hand that played the patron with her curls. 

And one said smiling '• Pretty were the sight 
If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt 140 

With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans, 

120. My book. Cf. 53. 

121. Old Sir Ralph. Of what century ? 
123. Cf. 44 ff. 

125. Walter. How related to Lilia? 

128. Convention. General or tacit consent ; conventionality. 

Cf. 11.72. 

133. Children. Cf. I. 136, 140. 

134. Another prefigurement. 

138. Played the patron with. Patronizingly caressed. 

139. Pretty were the sight. Cf. II. 2 ff., 414 ff., 448 ; IV. 456- 
460. 

141-2. Alliteration, 



10 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair. 

I think they should not wear our rusty gowns, 

But move as rich as Emperor-moths, or Ralph 

Who shines so in the corner ; yet I fear, 145 

If there were many Lilias in the brood. 

However deep you might embower the nest, 

Some boy would spy it.' 

At this upon the sward 
She tapped her tiny silken-sandaled foot : 
' That 's your light way ; but I would make it death 150 

For any male thing but to peep at us.' 

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed ; 
A rosebud set with little wilful thorns, 
And sweet as English air could make her, she ; 
But Walter hailed a score of names upon her, 155 

And 'petty Ogress,' and 'ungrateful Puss,' 
And swore he longed at college — only longed. 
All else was well — for she-society. 
They boated and they cricketed ; they talked 
At wine, in clubs, of art, of politics; 160 

They lost their weeks; they vext the souls of deans; 

142. Memorize. 

144. Emperor-moths. A picture in the Standard Dictionary. 
The prevailing colors are dark gray, brown, and reddish yellow, with 
blue spots. Cf. II. 5. 

149. Silken-sandaled. Bayard Taylor criticizes this; see note 
on 105. 

150. Death. Cf. II. 178. 
152. See p. xl. 

155. Hailed. Cf. I. 60; VI. 50. 

156. Ogress. A female demon or monster that was supposed to 
devour human beings. 

158. She-society. Cf. III. 147. 
159 ff. See Wordsworth, Prelude, III. 248-257. 
161. Lost their weeks. ' At an English University residence for 
a certain number of terms is necessary to render a student eligible 



prologue] a medley. 11 

They rode ; they betted ; made a hundred friends, 

And caught the blossom of the flying terms: 

But missed the mignonette of Vivian-place, 

The little hearth-flower Lilia. Thus he spoke, 165 

Part banter, part affection. 

'True,' she said, 

* We doubt not that. O yes, you missed us much. 
I '11 stake my ruby ring upon it you did.' 

She held it out; and as a parrot turns 
Up thro' gilt wires a crafty loving eye, 170 

And takes a lady's finger with all care, 
And bites it for true heart and not for harm, 
So he with Lilia's. Daintily she shrieked 
And wrung it. ' Doubt my word again! ' he said. 

* Come, listen ! here is proof that you were missed: 175 
We seven stayed at Christmas up to read; 

And there we took one tutor as to read ; 

The hard-grained Muses of the cube and square 

for his degree, and residence for a certain proportion of each term 
(reckoned by attendance at dinner) is necessary to enable him to 
*' count " that term. The expression therefore denotes that they 
were irregular in their observance of the college regulations con- 
cerning attendance, and consequently were unable to count certain 
weeks of their residence towards their degrees ' (Wallace). 

163. What is meant ? 

165. Hearth-flower. Cf. V. 122. 

170. Gilt wires. The Day-Dream 2,6: 

The parrot in his gilded wires. 

176. Read. Study ; the English expression. 
178. An elaborate periphrasis for mathematics. Not in the first 
edition, which reads : 

We seven took one tutor. Never man. 

The addition seems unnecessary, and exemplifies one of Tennyson's 
worst predilections — the bent for dressing up prose in a semblance 



12 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

Were out of season ; never man, I think, 

So moldered in a sinecure as he ; i8o 

For while our cloisters echoed frosty feet. 

And our long walks were stripped as bare as brooms, 

We did but talk you over, pledge you all 

In wassail; often, like as many girls. 

Sick for the hollies and the yews of home — 185 

As many little trifling Lilias — played 

Charades and riddles as at Christmas here, 

And What 's ??iy thought ? and Whc?t and Where and Hoiv ? 

And often told a tale from mouth to mouth, 

As here at Christmas.' 

She remembered that ; 190 

A pleasant game she thought ; she liked it more 
Than magic music, forfeits, all the rest. 
But these — what kind of tales did men tell men, 
She wondered, by themselves .? 

of poetry, when simplicity and rapidity would be more to the pur- 
pose. In such cases the effect becomes one of unrelieved, almost 
tinsel gaudiness, which deprives the intrinsically excellent parts of 
their due relief. 

180. What was this sinecure? 

181. Echoed frosty feet. Ci. Aforte d' Arthur : 

The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based 
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang 
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels. 

182. Walks. Avenues of trees. 

184. Wassail. Drinking of healths. From OE. wes hdl, 'be 
whole,' ' be well,' where the wes is imperative, like fare in farewell. 
Cf. The Epic 5; In Memoriam CIV. 18. 

185. On what occasion is holly most used? See In Memoriam 
XXIX. 9; XXX. 2. 

192. Magic music. ' Some hidden article is sought for by one of 
the company, who is partly guided in his efforts by the music of 
some instrument which is played fast and loud as he approaches the 
place of concealment, and more slowly and softly as he wanders from 
it ' (Wallace). 



prologue] a medley. 13 

A half-disdain 
Perched on the pouted blossom of her lips ; 195 

And Walter nodded at me : ' He began, 
The rest would follow, each in turn ; and so 
We forged a sevenfold story. Kind ? what kind ? 
Chimeras, crotchets, Christmas solecisms, 
Seven-headed monsters only made to kill 200 

Time by the fire in winter.' 

' Kill him now, 
The tyrant ! kill him in the summer too,' 
Said Lilia; ' Why not now > ' the maiden Aunt. 
'■ Why not a summer's as a winter's tale ? 
A tale for summer as befits the time, 205 

And something it should be to suit the place, 
Heroic — for a hero Hes beneath — 
Grave, solemn ! ' 

Walter warped his mouth at this 
To something so mock-solemn, that I laughed, 
And Lilia woke with sudden-shrilling mirth 210 

195. Blossom of her lips. Ci. (Enone 'j6: 

He pressed the blossom of his lips to mine. 

Probably suggested by uses of the Greek &vdos, ' blossom,' * flower.' 
Trace the resemblance in this metaphor. 

199. Chimeras. Absurd creations of the imagination. Describe 
the Greek Chimsera. — Crotchets. Whimsical inventions. 7- Sole- 
cisms. 'This word is fancifully derived from the fact that the 
Athenian settlers at Soli, a town in Cilicia, lost the original purity 
of the Attic dialect. It thus denotes originally an impropriety in 
language, then, more loosely, any incongruity or inconsistency — 
here a ridiculous story ' (Wallace). 

In this line the poet anticipates and deprecates adverse criticism 
on the incongruities of his story. 

204. Winter's tale. Cf. 231. 

207-9. Cf. Con. 10-28. 

210. Sudden-shrilling. Cf. Madeline it^\ ^/az«^ 327. — Shrill- 
ing. V. 241 ; VII. 31. 



14 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

An echo like a ghostly woodpecker 

Hid in the ruins ; till the maiden Aunt 

(A little sense of wrong had touched her face 

With color) turned to me with ' As you will ; 

Heroic if you will, or what you will, 215 

Or be yourself your hero if you will.' 

' Take Lilia, then, for heroine,' clamored he, 
' And make her some great Princess, six feet high, 
Grand, epic, homicidal ; and be you 
The Prince to win her ! ' 

' Then follow me, the Prince,' 220 
I answered ; ' each be hero in his turn ! 
Seven and yet one, like shadows in a dream. 
Heroic seems our Princess as required ; 
But something made to suit with time and place, 
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house, 225 

A talk of college and of ladies' rights, 
A feudal knight in silken masquerade. 
And, yonder, shrieks and strange experiments 
For which the good Sir Ralph had burnt them all — 
These were a medley ! we should have him back 230 

211. Bayard Taylor criticises warped and sudden-shrilling. He 
says : ' I italicize expressions which are simply unusual — original 
by force of will — not happy, nor agreeable. It is quite impossible 
to imagine laughter the echo of which sounds like a ghostly wood- 
pecker ! ' In Kate, a poem of the volume of 1833, Tennyson had 
written : ' As laughters of the woodpecker.' The first four editions 
of The Princess have April instead of ghostly. 

218. Six feet high. Compare what is said of Arac, V. 244-8, 
264. 

222. Dream. Again a way of deprecating criticism on improba- 
bilities. The word appears twenty times as a noun in The Princess. 

225-8. Cf. II, 70, 92, 103, 127 ff. 

229. Had burntthem all. Why? 

230. Were. Parse. — Medley. What is the full title of the poem "i 



prologue] a medley. IS 

Who told the ' Winter's Tale ' to do it for us. 
No matter ; we will say whatever comes. 
And let the ladies sing us, if they will, 
From time to time, some ballad or a song 
To give us breathing-space.' 

So I began, 235 

And the rest followed; and the women sang 
Between the rougher voices of the men. 
Like linnets in the pauses of the wind ; 
And here I give the story and the songs. 

231. Winter's Tale. Have you read it? Compare note on I. 134, 
the latter part. 

233-8. Added in the third edition, with the six songs. 

236. The women sang. ' The songs, like the little child, breathe 
of motherhood, wifehood, love ; of that love which is the poet's best 
solution of the problem he undertook to solve ' (Luce, Handbook to 
Tennyson'' s Works, p. 245). 

238. In the pauses of the wind. The Miller's Daughter \22-y. 

And, in the pauses of the wind, 
Sometimes I heard you sing within. 

But Shelley had already said {^Letter to Maria Gisborne) : 

The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill 
The empty pauses of the blast. 

Hallam Tennyson says : ' It may be remarked that there is 
scarcely anything in the story which is not prophetically glanced 
at in the Prologue' (Wallace). 

Compare the Prologue with the Conclusion, and try to form a 
judgment of why they were provided. Would not the story have 
been as acceptable without them } There must be some reason why 
the poet thought them necessary, for we have a fragment of his 
conversation reported in the Nineteenth Century (XXXIII. 173), 
by its editor, Knowles, to this effect : * " It is necessary to respect 
the limits," he said ; " an artist is one who recognizes bounds to his 
work as a necessity, and does not overflow inimitably to all extent 
about a matter. I soon found that if I meant to make any mark 
at all it must be by shortness, for all the men before me had been 



16 THE PRINCESS: [prologue 

so diffuse, and all the big things had been done. To get the work- 
manship as nearly perfect as possible is the best chance for going 
down the stream of time. A small vessel on fine hnes is likely to 
float farther than a great raft." ' 

He must have carefully considered everything, so far as was 
possible at the time, for we are told by Jennings {Lord Tennyson, 
p. 115): ' While the poem was passing through the press he 
subjected it to such minute revision that Mr. Moxon regarded him, 
says Miss Mitford, as *' a great torment, keeping proofs a fortnight 
to alter, and then sending for revises." ' Was such careful work- 
manship of advantage to the poem .1* Cf. pp. xxii, xxxi. 



A MEDLEY. 17 



A PRINCE I was, blue-eyed, and fair in face, 
Of temper amorous, as the first of May, 
With lengths of yellow ringlet, like a girl. 
For on my cradle shone the Northern star. 

There lived an ancient legend in our house. 
Some sorcerer, whom a far-oif grandsire burnt 
Because he cast no shadow, had foretold, 
Dying, that none of all our blood should know 
The shadow from the substance, and that one 
Should come to fight with shadows and to fall. 
For so, my mother said, the story ran. 
And, truly, waking dreams were, more or less. 
An old and strange affection of the house. 
Myself too had weird seizures. Heaven knows what : 

3. Yellow ringlet. Cf. z^- 

4. Wallace says : * This periphrasis is very characteristic of the 
poet's genius. The bald meaning is : " For I am a native of a 
northern country," but the form of the expression in the text, 
besides embodying an idea picturesque in itself, has also a distant 
reference to the old astrology, which taught that the various planets 
guided the fortunes of those who were born under their respective 
influences.' 

6. Burnt. Cf. Prol. 229. 

7. Cast no shadow. Like Peter Schlemihl, in Chamisso's tale. 
14. Weird seizures. ' The " weird seizures," the " haunting sense 

of hollow shows," is a trait added to the character of the Prince 
in the edition of 1851. And the poet meant it to emphasize the 
part played by Nature in subduing the Princess ; also to make the 
Prince less heroic, and to serve as an apology for his being so ; to 
serve also as an apology for the character of the whole poem ; and 
more especially to make the work of redemption set apart for the 



18 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

On a sudden in the midst of men and day, 15 

And while I walked and talked as heretofore, 
I seemed to move among a world of ghosts, 

Princess more important and more complete ; for her is reserved the 
doubtful privilege of making a man of him. ... In regard to 
these " weird seizures," ... it is interesting to note that . . . the 
poet always speaks of them in contemptuous terms, as befits their 
dramatic position ' (Luce, Handbook, p. 243). 

On the other side, hear Woodberry (p. 133) : 'The gain was con- 
siderable ; the Prince was not a hero, but only a lover ; and his 
character as a lover is not weakened, but rather strengthened, by 
ascribing to him the " affection of the house," especially as this is 
presented less as a physical disease than as the state of vision and 
faintness traditionally associated with the lovers of romance ; his 
figure gathers both pathos and glamor, and evokes greater sympathy 
through the device ; secondly, by this means an atmosphere of 
dreamland and unreality is diffused from time to time through the 
whole story, and relieves materially the weakness of the machinery 
of the narrative, which, taken too literally, is always in danger of 
becoming farcical and degenerating into opera-botiffe effects ; thirdly, 
there is a continuous suggestion that the true illusion is the theory 
of life exemplified in the Princess and her school, and the true 
cure — the return to reality — is the love-match which makes the 
lovers whole in their united selves. Such indefinable suggestion as 
is indicated by these statements is of the essence of poetic art, and 
not less real because it escapes observation in detail. On the 
whole, the "weird seizures" seem to aid in realizing the tempera- 
ment of the Prince, in giving definition to his vague life (for, so far 
as he is seen, he is without any true experience in action or 
thought — he has never done anything), and also in fusing the 
whole matter of the poem, and reducing its " medley " to a common 
tone of feeling.' 

Dawson {Shidy, p. 49) disagrees with this. He says : ' These ad- 
ditions seem not only unnecessary and uncalled for, but are actually 
injurious to the unity of the work. They confuse the simple concep- 
tion of his character, and graft on to his personality the foreign and 
somewhat derogatory idea of catalepsy ; for in that light does the 
court doctor regard them. The poet must have had some definite 
object in inserting them. Can it be that they are to indicate the 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 19 

And feel myself the shadow of a dream. 

Our great court-Galen poised his gilt-head cane, 

And pawed his beard, and muttered ' catalepsy.' 20 

My mother, pitying, made a thousand prayers ; 

My mother was as mild as any saint. 

Half-canonized by all that looked on her. 

So gracious was her tact and tenderness; 

But my good father thought a king a king; 25 

weakness and incompleteness of the poet side of tlie Prince's char- 
acter until he has found rest in his ideal ? Then only can he say — 

My doubts are dead, 
My haunting sense of hollow shows ; the change, 
This truthful change, in thee has killed it. 

' The dreamy Prince, haunted by doubts and living in shadowland, 
by the healing influence of a happy love wakes up to the purpose 
and dignity of life. Such a change is perhaps not very uncommon. 
Unless a man be endowed with a strong animal nature, or be 
dominated by some selfish passion such as ambition or avarice, 
life is very apt to seem purposeless, and not worth the trouble of 
living. For such an unhealthy state of mind a worthy love is the 
sole remedy. Possibly some such meaning may have been in the 
mind of the author ; but still we must resent the least imputation of 
catalepsy as inartistic and unnecessary.' 

18. The shadow of a dream. In Greek literature life is often 
called a dream or a shadowy but Pindar, in his eighth Pythian ode, 
was the first to combine them in the phrase (tklols 8vap dvdpioTos, — 
' man is the dream of a shadow.' Tennyson's expression is 
Shakespearian {Hatnl. II. ii. 265) : ' Dreams indeed are ambition, 
for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a 
dream.'' From Shakespeare it is adopted by Shelley, Ode to Heaven, 
and again in Prince Athanase I. 198; cf. Epips. 116, and Prol. 222. 

19. Galen was a Greek physician (a.d. 130-200). 

20. Catalepsy. A rare nervous condition, characterized by a 
sudden suspension of consciousness and obstinate muscular rigidity 
associated with plasticity, so that a limb remains in any attitude 
given it {Standard Dictionary). 

22. Mother. See VII. 298-312. 

25. Father. For other indications of his character see IV. 387- 
397 ; V. 144-160, 342-350, 428-456. 



20 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

He cared not for the affection of the house; 
He held his sceptre Hke a pedant's wand 
To lash offense, and with long arms and hands 
Reached out, and picked offenders from the mass 
For judgment. 

Now it chanced that I had been, 30 

While life was yet in bud and blade, betrothed 
To one, a neighboring Princess ; she to me 
Was proxy-wedded with a bootless calf 
At eight years old; and still from time to time 
Came murmurs of her beauty from the South, 35 

And of her brethren, youths of puissance ; 
And still I wore her picture by my heart, 

33. Proxy-wedded. Rather, espoused io the proxy, or representa- 
tive, of the Prince. Dawson says (p. 63) : ' The Princess is sound 
in her law. She says, Book V. [388-9], that at the age of eight there 
could be no consent, and she had given none since. King Gama 
says there was a "kind of ceremony " [122-3], ^^^"^^ the Prince even 
does not dare, in the presence of the Princess, to call it more than 
a "precontract" [III. 191].' 

With a bootless calf. The ceremony is thus described in Bacon's 
History of King Henry VII., the marriage referred to being that of 
Maximilian of Austria with Anne of Brittany in 1489: *The mar- 
riage was consummated by proxy, with a ceremony at that time in 
those parts new. For she was not only publicly contracted, but 
stated as a bride, and solemnly bedded ; and after she was laid, 
there came in Maximilian's ambassador, with letters of procuration, 
and in the presence of sundry noble personages, men and women, ftit 
his leg, stript naked to the knee, between the espousal sheets ; to the 
end that the ceremony might be thought to amount to a consum- 
mation and actual knowledge.' 

Charles Astor Bristed says {Anier.Rev. VIII (1848). yj) : ' Where 
was the need of allusion or reference to this barbarous and disgust- 
ing custom of a dark age ? You can't say it was introduced to 
preserve historical accuracy, for there is no historical or chrono- 
logical keeping in the poem.' 

35. Cf. IV. 411,416. 

36. Youths of puissance. Cf. V. 244-6. 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 21 

And one dark tress ; and all around them both 

Sweet thoughts would swarm, as bees about their queen. 

But when the days drew nigh that I should wed, 40 

My father sent ambassadors with furs 
And jewels, gifts, to fetch her ; these brought back 
A present, a great labor of the loom; 
And therewithal an answer vague as wind ; 
Besides, they saw the king ; he took the gifts ; 4^ 

He said there was a compact ; that was true ; 
But then she had a will — was he to blame ? — 
And maiden fancies ; loved to live alone 
Among her women ; certain, would not wed. 

That morning in the presence room I stood 50 

With Cyril and with Florian, my two friends: 
The first, a gentleman of broken means 
(His father's fault) but given to starts and bursts 
Of revel ; and the last, my other heart, 

And almost my half-self, — for still we moved 5c 

Together, twinned as horse's ear and eye. 

Now, while they spake, I saw my father's face 
Grow long and troubled, like a rising moon. 
Inflamed with wrath ; he started on his feet, 

41. Furs. Characteristic of the North. 

51. Luce calls Cyril ' the incarnation of humorous common sense ' 
{Hajtdbook, p. 244). 

55. Half-self. Perhaps from Horace, Od. I. iii. 8: 'animee dimi- 
dium me^.' The expression is said to have originated with Pythago- 
ras : riixLav ttjs i^vxvs, ' half of the soul.' 

56. Twinned. The first edition has kin. Woodberry says : 
' The simile of the " horse's ear and eye " is, in its exactness, 
characteristic of Tennyson, but it is not noble.' 

58. Like a rising moon. Have you ever observed this ? 
59-62. Cf. p. xl. 



22 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

Tore the king's letter, snowed it down, and rent 60 

The wonder of the loom thro' warp and woof 

From skirt to skirt; and at the last he sware 

That he would send a hundred thousand men, 

And bring her in a whirlwind ; then he chewed 

The thrice-turned cud of wrath, and cooked his spleen, 65 

Communing with his captains of the war. 

At last I spoke. ' My father, let me go. 
It cannot be but some gross error lies 
In this report, this answer of a king 

Whom all men rate as kind and hospitable; 70 

Or, maybe, I myself, my bride once seen, 
Whate'er my grief to find her less than fame, 
May rue the bargain made.' And Florian said : 
' I have a sister at the foreign court. 

Who moves about the Princess ; she, you know, 75 

Who wedded with a nobleman from thence ; 
He, dying lately, left her, as I hear, 
The lady of three castles in that land ; 
Thro' her this matter might be sifted clean.' 
And Cyril whispered : ' Take me with you too.' 80 

Then, laughing ' What if these weird seizures come 
Upon you in those lands, and no one near 
To point you out the shadow from the truth ? 

62. Sware. Such archaic forms are found in the Bible; cf. e.g. 
Heb. 3. II. 

65. Cooked his spleen. Nursed his anger. Churton Collins 
notes that this is derived from the Iliad (IV. 513). Taylor criti- 
cizes the expressions chewed and cooked (p. 19) ; see also p. xxxi. 

66. Captains. Commanders, generals ; as in the Bible. 

71. My bride once seen. An absolute construction. 

72. 'The expression "less than fame" is an adaptation of a 
common classical idiom; cf. IV. 427, "The dwarfs of presage'" 
(Wallace). 

74. A sister. Cf. II. 89 ff. 



TART I.] A MEDLEY. 23 

Take me ; I '11 serve you better in a strait ; 

I grate on rusty hinges here ; ' but ' No ! ' 85 

Roared the rough king, ' you shall not ; we ourself 

Will crush her pretty maiden fancies dead 

In iron gauntlets ; break the council up.' 

But when the council broke, I rose and passed 
Thro' the wild woods that hung about the town ; * 90 

Found a still place, and plucked her likeness out; 
Laid it on flowers, and watched it lying bathed 
In the green gleam of dewy-tasseled trees : 
What were those fancies ? wherefore break her troth ? 
Proud looked the lips ; but while I meditated 95 

84. Strait. Difficulty. 

85. I grate on rusty hinges here. Cf. Holy Grail: 

But here too much 
We molder — as to things without, I mean. 

86-88. See p. xl. 

87. Maiden fancies. Cf. 48. 

90. Hung. Luce notes the mannerism in Tennyson's frequent 
use of this verb in the poetical sense here employed, — no fewer 
than nine times in The Princess. 

91. Likeness. Cf. ■t,'j. 

92. Bathed. Cf. The Day-Dream 29 : 

Soft lustre bathes the range of urns 
On every slanting terrace-lawn. 

93. Dewy-tasseled. Hallam Tennyson comments : ' Hung with 
catkins as in the hazel-wood. It was spring-time' (Wallace). 
Tennyson uses it again in Iti Menioriam (LXXXVI. 6) : 

Thro' all the dewy-tasseled wood. 

Brooke says {Tennyson.f^.ido) : 'The lines . . . exactly express 
that which is so rarely observed, — the different murmurs of differ- 
ently foliaged trees in a faint wind, which a fine ear can distinguish 
in a wood, but which, when a fuller puff goes by, are merged into 
one chorus with the singing of birds and tossing of boughs.' 



24 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

A wind arose and rushed upon the South, 

And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks 

Of the wild woods together; and a Voice 

Went with it, ' Follow, follow, thou shalt win.' 

Then, ere the silver sickle of that month loo 

Became her golden shield, I stole from court 
With Cyril and with Florian, unperceived. 
Cat-footed thro' the town, and half in dread 
To hear my father's clamor at our backs. 
With ' Ho! ' from some bay-window shake the night; 105 
But all was quiet ; from the bastioned walls 
Like threaded spiders, one by one, we dropped. 
And flying reached the frontier ; then we crossed 
To a livelier land ; and so by tilth and grange, 

96-99. As long ago as 1880 Collins noted that this was a remi- 
niscence of a quatrain from Shelley's Pronietheus Unbound (II. i. 

156-9): 

A wind arose among the pines ; it shook 

The clinging music from their boughs, and then 

Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts. 

Were heard : ' Oh follow, follow, follow me ! ' 

Dawson remarked {Study, p. 65), that it must have, consciously 
or unconsciously, dwelt in Tennyson's memory when writing these 
lines. See Tennyson's rejoinder in his letter, p. xxxviii. 

Mrs. Ritchie's statement should also be noted {Harper's Maga- 
zine LXVIII. 21) : 'The wind . . . once . . . came sweeping through 
the garden of this old Lincolnshire rectory, and, as the wind blew, a 
sturdy child of five years old, with shining locks, stood opening his 
arms upon the blast and letting himself be blown along, and as he 
traveled on he made his first line of poetry and said, " I hear a voice 
that 's speaking in the wind," and he tossed his arms, and the gust 
whirled on, sweeping into the great abyss of winds.' Compare also 
the line in Rizpah : 

And Willy's voice in the wind, ' O mother, come out to me.' 

100. Briefly paraphrase the dependent clause. 
109. Tilth. Cultivated soil ; so in Milton, Paradise Lost XL 
430, and in Enoch Arden 676. — Grange. An isolated farmhouse 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 25 

And vines, and blowing bosks of wilderness, no 

We gained the mother-city thick with towers, 
And in the imperial palace found the king. 

His name was Gama; cracked and small his voice. 
But bland the smile that, like a wrinkling wind 
On glassy water, drove his cheek in lines; 115 

A little dry old man, without a star. 
Not like a king. Three days he feasted us, 
And on the fourth I spake of why we came, 
And my betrothed. ' You do us. Prince,' he said, 

regarded as the residence of a gentleman farmer {Standard Dic- 
tionary). Cf, the description of the grange in Mariana. There we 

have : 

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
Upon the lonely moated grange. 

And in Sir Galahad : 

So pass I hostel, hall, and grange. 

Also In Memoriam XCI. 12 ; C. 5. 

no. Blowing bosks of wilderness. 'Uncultivated thickets 
blooming with wil(^ flowers ' (Dawson). Collins {Illustrations of 
Tennyson., p. 19) gives bosks as an illustration of Tennyson's propen- 
sity, like Virgil's, to ' affect archaisms and the revival or adoption of 
obsolete or provincial words.' Bristed says {Amer. Mag. VIII. 32) : 
' How like a journey in fairyland it is, with all those quaint Eliza- 
bethan words ! ' 

III. Mother-city. Metropolis ; cf. 'mother-town,' /^ iT/^-^z^r/aw 
XCVIII. 21. What is the literal meaning of metropolis? 

113. 'Gama is the impersonation of insignificance and effemi- 
nacy, and his view of women is, like his character, insignificant.' 

114-5. Wace compares Shelley, Prince Athanase (II. ii. 47-51) : 

But o'er the vision wan 
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere 

Of dark emotion, a swift shadow ran, » 

Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake, 
Glassy and dark. 

116. Without a star. Stars are frequently worn by persons of 
rank as indications of their membership in orders of nobility. 



26 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

Airing a snowy hand and signet gem, 120 

' All honor. We remember love ourselves 

In our sweet youth ; there did a compact pass 

Long summers back, a kind of ceremony — 

I think the year in which our olives failed. 

I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart, 125 

With my full heart ; but there were widows here, 

Two widows. Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche ; 

They fed her theories, in and out of place 

Maintaining that with equal husbandry 

The woman were an equal to the man. 130 

They harped on this; with this our banquets rang; 

Our dances broke and buzzed in knots of talk; 

Nothing but this ; my very ears were hot 

To hear them ; knowledge, so my daughter held, 

121. Ourselves. Rolfe suggests that this should be ourself, com- 
parmg V. 198. 

128 ff. Cf. III. 69 ff. ; IV. 273 ff. ; VI. 304 ff. 

129. Husbandry. A pun? 

134. Knowledge, etc. Dawson says {Study, p. 67) : ' This is the 
central point of the Princess's delusion. Some have thought that 
Tennyson borrowed the idea of his poem from Johnson's Rasselas. 
It is a long way from Rasselas to The Princess. The following is 
the only passage upon which this theory is based, — a very slender 
support : 

" The Princess thought that of all sublunary things knowledge 
was the best ; she desired, first, to learn all sciences, and then 
proposed to found a college of learned women, in which she would 
preside, that by conversing with the old and educating the young 
she might divide her time between the acquisition and communica- 
tion of wisdom." . . . 

' Others suppose that the idea was suggested by Love's Labor 'j 
Lost I. I : 

Our court shall be a little Academe, 
Still and contemplative in living art. 

This is far more probable, because the plot of that play turns on 
the attempted seclusion of a king and his attendants for three 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 27 

Was all in all ; they had but been, she thought, 135 

As children ; they must lose the child, assume 
The woman ; then, Sir, awful odes she wrote, 
Too awful, sure, for what they treated of, 

years in study, during which time no woman was to approach the 
court. The disturbing influence of love upon such a plan is the 
motive of the comedy.' 

Collins {Illustrations of Tennyson, p. 78) suggests the Faerie 
Qiieene, Bk. V., cantos iv.-vi., and adds : ' In any case, it should be 
carefully compared with the latter, as the moral and the teaching are 
identical ; both being refutations of the theory advanced in the fifth 
book of Plato's Republic.^ On the question of these origins, see 
Luce, Handbook, pp. 233-5. 

On the larger question of the rank of mere knowledge, cf. 
Locksley Hall : 

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. 

In Memoriam, Invocation : 

Let knowledge grow from more to more, 

But more of reverence in us dwell. 

That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster. 

In Memoriam CXIV. 22-23 • 

For she is earthly of the mind. 
But Wisdom heavenly of the soul. 

And indeed the whole of In Memoriam CXIV, besides the follow- 
ing from Cowper's Task (VI. 88-99) : 

Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one. 
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells 
In heads replete with thoughts of other men ; 
Wisdom in minds attentive to their own. 
Knowledge, a rude unprofitable mass. 
The mere materials with which wisdom builds 
Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place. 
Does but encumber when it should enrich. 
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; 
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. 

136. They must lose the child. Cf. Prol. 133. 



28 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

But all she is and does is awful ; odes 

About this losing of the child; and rimes 140 

And dismal lyrics, prophesying change 

Beyond all reason; these the women sang; 

And they that know such things — I sought but peace ; 

No critic I — would call them masterpieces : 

They mastered me. At last she begged a boon, 145 

A certain summer palace which I have 

Hard by your father's frontier; I said no. 

Yet being an easy man, gave it ; and there. 

All wild to found an University 

For maidens, on the spur she fied ; and more 150 

We know not, — only this : they see no men. 

Not even her brother Arac, nor the twins 

Her brethren, tho' they love her, look upon her 

As on a kind of paragon ; and I 

(Pardon me saying it) were much loth to breed 155 

Dispute betwixt myself and mine, but since 

(And I confess with right) you think me bound 

In some sort, I can give you letters to her ; 

And yet, to speak the truth, I rate your chance 

Almost at naked nothing:.' 

Thus the king; 160 



'&• 



140. Losing of the child. This was to be the title of one of 
Tennyson's songs, though in an entirely different sense; cf. p. xxxvii. 
The word child proves to have a cardinal importance in the poem. 

142. These the women sang. How different from what the 
women sing between these Cantos ! 

148. The line halts metrically. 

149. An. Should be A. 

151. The Princess, it has been said, commits three mistakes. 
This line discloses one, and lines 134-6 reveal two others. What 
are they t As you read on, see which of them are ultimately aban- 
doned. 

152. For these brothers, see V. 245 ff. 
155. Me. Yoxmy? 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 29 

And I, tho' nettled that he seemed to slur 

With garrulous ease and oily courtesies 

Our formal compact, yet, not less (all frets 

But chafing me on fire to find my bride) 

Went forth again with both my friends. We rode 165 

Many a long league back to the North. At last, 

From hills that looked across a land of hope, 

We dropped with evening on a rustic town 

Set in a gleaming river's crescent-curve, 

Close at the boundary of the liberties; 170 

There, entered an old hostel, called mine host 

To council, plied him with his richest wines, 

And showed the late-writ letters of the king. 

He with a long low sibilation, stared 
As blank as death in marble; then exclaimed, i75 

Averring it was clear against all rules 
For any man to go ; but as his brain 
Began to mellow, ' If the king,' he said, 

163-4. AH frets ... my bride. ' All impediments serving 
only to aggravate my impatience to meet my betrothed face to face ' 
(Wallace). 

166. See p. xli. 

167. A land of hope. Why so called? 

168-9. On a . . . crescent-curve. In the early editions merely : 

Upon a little town within a wood. 

Note the poet's fondness for adding (irrelevant ?) picturesque 
details. 

170. Liberties. * An English legal term for adjacent privileged 
territory, here used of the outskirts of the estate within which the 
exclusive rights granted to the Princess were exercised' (Wood- 
berry). 

171. Mine host. A Shakespearian phrase, which has become 
established in literature. 

175. As blank as death in marble. Cf. V. 71-72. 



30 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

' Had given us letters, was he bound to speak ? 

The king would bear him out; ' and at the last — i8o 

The summer of the vine in all his veins — 

' No doubt that we might make it worth his while. 

She once had past that way; he heard her speak; 

She scared him; life! he never saw the like; 

She looked as grand as doomsday, and as grave; 185 

And he, he reverenced his liege-lady there; 

He always made a point to post with mares; 

His daughter and his housemaid were the boys; 

The land, he understood, for miles about 

Was tilled by women; all the swine were sows, j^o 

And all the dogs ' — 

But while he jested thus, 
A thought flashed thro' me which I clothed in act, 
Remembering how we three presented Maid, 
Or Nymph, or Goddess, at high tide of feast, 
In masque or pageant at my father's court. 195 

We sent mine host to purchase female gear; 

179. Bound to speak. Either to allege the rules, or to reveal 
their intention to the Princess ; it does not seem quite certain which. 
181. Cf. Marriage of Geraint 398 : 

For now the wine made summer in his veins. 

187-191. Is this in good taste? For what reason is it intro- 
duced ? 

188. Boys, Postilions. 

193. Presented. Represented. Cf. Shakespeare, Tetnpest IV. i. 
167. 

194. High tide. Highest point ; tide, as in Whitsun/zV/^. Cf. 
Shakespeare, King John III. i. 86: 

Among the high tides in the calendar. 

But there the word means ' festival,' ' holiday.' 

195. What do you know of masques and pageants,? 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 31 

He brought it, and himself, a sight to shake 

The midriff of despair with laughter, holp 

To lace us up, till, each, in maiden plumes 

We rustled. Him we gave a costly bribe 200 

To guerdon silence, mounted our good steeds. 

And boldly ventured on the liberties. 

We followed up the river as we rode, 
And rode till midnight, when the college lights 
Began to glitter firefly-like in copse 205 

And linden alley ; then w^e past an arch. 
Whereon a woman-statue rose with wings 
From four winged horses dark against the stars; 
And some inscription ran along the front, 
But deep in shadow: further on we gained 210 

A little street, half garden and half house; 
But scarce could hear each other speak for noise 
Of clocks and chimes, like silver hammers falling 
On silver anvils, and the splash and stir 

197-8. A sight . . . with laughter. Possibly suggested by 
Biron's question in Lovers Labor 'j Lost (V. ii. 865) : 

To move wild laughter in the throat of death ? 

198. Holp. Helped. An archaism. 

201. Guerdon. Reward. 

202. Liberties. Cf. 170. 

206. Linden alley. Cf. IV. 191. 

207. With wings. Why with wings ? 
209. Cf. II. 178. 

211. How do you understand this ? 

213. Clocks. Cf. VII. 88-90. 

214. Anvils. Contrast V. 493-4. Dawson comments on this 
passage {Study, p. 25) : 'The love of precise punctuality, so deeply 
implanted in the female breast, has full scope at last, as far as 
pretty clocks go. Everywhere are busts and statues and lutes, and 
such like bric-h-brac aids to knowledge — promiscuously strewed 



32 THE PRINCESS: [part i. 

Of fountains spouted up and showering down 215 

In meshes of the jasmine and the rose; 
And all about us pealed the nightingale, 
Rapt in her song, and careless of the snare. 

There stood a bust of Pallas for a sign. 
By two sphere lamps blazoned like Heaven and Earth 220 
With constellation and with continent. 
Above an entry; riding in, we called; 
A plump-armed ostleress and a stable wench 
Came running at the call, and helped us down. 
Then stept a buxom hostess forth, and sailed, 225 

Full-blown, before us into rooms which gave 

about like blue china and crockery-ware bulldogs in a modern 
drawing-room. Instinctively the male reader shrinks through this 
part of the poem, fearful of upsetting something. Very properly, 
also, the path of knowledge, thorny to the tyrannous male, is made 
comfortable there. The ladies drink in science 

Leaning deep in broidered down, 

as is befitting. Everything matches in that university. No com- 
mon pine — the professorial desk is of satinwood. Due attention 
is paid to dress, also ; the doctors are violet-hooded, and the girls all 
uniformly in white — gregarious, though, even there, as in the outer 
world. The Princess, her hair still damp after her plunge in the 
river, though sitting in indignant judgment upon the culprits, has yet 
a jewel on her forehead.' 

217. Cf. IV. 247. 

219. Bust. Is this referred to again in VI. 347? — Pallas. 
Signifying what ? 

220-1. See p. xli. 

221. Distributed how.'' Are the nouns to be understood as 
singulars or plurals ? 

224-5. After midnight ? Did the college turn night into day.-* 
Cf. 204-5. Why wait till dawn to send a letter (241) .? 

226. Gave. Opened ; like the French donner. Cf. Prol. 93, and 
The Gardener'' s Daughter no. 



^3° 



PART I.] A MEDLEY. 33 

Upon a pillared porch, the bases lost 
In laurel ; her we asked of that and this, 
And who were tutors. ' Lady Blanche ' she said, 
' And Lady Psyche.' ' Which was prettiest, 
Best-natured ? ' * Lady Psyche.' ' Hers are we,' 
One voice, we cried; and I sat down and wrote. 
In such a hand as when a field of corn 
Bows all its ears before the roaring East: 

' Three ladies of the Northern empire pray 235 

Your Highness would enroll them with your own. 
As Lady Psyche's pupils.' 

This I sealed; 
The seal was Cupid bent above a scroll. 
And o'er his head Uranian Venus hung, 
And raised the blinding bandage from his eyes; 240 

227. Pillared porch. Cf. the fuller description in 11. 8-14. What 
style of architecture is indicated ? 

230. Prettiest. Tennyson evidently had not the fear of the 
modern grammarian before his eyes. So he writes in Ayhner's 

Field (364-5) : 

When two fight 
The strongest wins. 

233-4. The simile is from Homer {Iliad II. 147-8), as Wace 
notes : ' As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield, rushing 
down with furious blast, and it bows with all its ears.' Why does 
he write such a hand ? Was it usual with him ? 

239. Uranian Venus. Dawson notes that the allusion is to 
Plato's Symposium (180, D, E), thus translated by Jowett (II. 32) : 
* And am I not right in asserting that there are two goddesses ? The 
elder one, having no mother, who is called the heavenly Aphro- 
dite — she is the daughter of Uranus; the younger, who is the 
daughter of Zeus and Dione — her we call common ; and the Love 
who is her fellow-worker may and must also have the name of 
common, as the other love is called heavenly.' 

240. Is the ' blinding bandage ' raised from the eyes of any of 
the characters of the poem before its close ? 



34 THE PRINCESS. [part i. 

I gave the letter to be sent with dawn; 

And then to bed, where half in doze I seemed 

To float about a glimmering night, and watch 

A full sea, glazed with muffled moonlight, swell 

On some dark shore just seen that it was rich. 245 



244. Cf. Tennyson's letter (p. xxxvii). 

245. Will the latter part of 167 help you to interpret this 
Bristed (p. 37) criticizes the grammar of this line. 



As thro' the land at eve we went, 

And plucked the ripened ears, 
We fell out, my wife and I, 
O we fell out I know not why. 

And kissed again with tears. 

[lAnd blessings on the falling out 

That all the more endears, 
When we fall out with those we love, 

And kiss again with tears.] 

For when we came where lies the child 

We lost in other years, 
There above the little grave, 
O there above the little grave, 

We kissed again with tears. 

Cf. Prol. 236, and Tennyson's letter (p. 00). All these songs should be 
learned by hearty as well as memorized. 

1 1 agree with Boynton that the song would be better without this quatrain, 
for which reason I have printed it in brackets. Tennyson seems once to have 
thought so himself, for he excised it from the fourth edition (185 1), though 
he restored it in the fifth (1853). The form of the whole lyric in the third 
edition (1850) — where all the songs first appeared — maybe learned from 
p. XX vi. 



36 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 



II. 

At break of day the College Portress came; 

She brought us Academic silks, in hue 

The lilac, with a silken hood to each. 

And zoned with gold; and now when these were on, 

And we as rich as moths from dusk cocoons, , 5 

She, curtseying her obeisance, let us know 

The Princess Ida waited. Out we paced, 

I first, and following thro' the porch that sang 

All round with laurel, issued in a court 

Compact of lucid marbles, bossed with lengths lo 

Of classic frieze, with ample awnings gay 

Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers. 

The Muses and the Graces, grouped in threes, 

5. Moths. Cf. Prol. 144. 
8. Sang. Murmured, rustled. 

g. Laurel. Sacred to whom? What mythological personage 
was changed into the laurel ? 

10. Compact. Composed, with the added notion of close, firm, 
and neat combination. — Lucid. Cf . Browning's song in Paracelsus : 

A hundred shapes of lucid stone, 

and Shelley's Adonais (XI. i) : 

Lucid urn of starry dew. 

— Marbles. Cf. VI. 331. — Bossed. Carved in relief. 

11. Frieze. Explain. Ci.MiMon, Paradise Lost W. i^^: 

Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven. 

— Awnings. Is the scene tropical or semi-tropical ? What 
country, should you say ? 

13. Muses. The deities who presided over poetry, art, and 
science, especially over the different kinds of poetry. They were nine 
in number : Clio, of history ; Melpomene, of tragedy ; Thaha, of 



PART II.] ^ MEDLEY. 37 

Enringed a billowing fountain in the midst ; 

And here and there on lattice edges lay 15 

Or book or lute ; but hastily we passed, 

And up a flight of stairs into the hall. 

There at a board by tome and paper sat, 
With two tame leopards couched beside her throne, 
All beauty compassed in a female form, 20 

The Princess; liker to the inhabitant 
Of some clear planet close upon the sun, 
Than our man's earth ; such eyes were in her head, 
And so much grace and power, breathing down 
From over her arched brows, with every turn 25 

Lived thro' her to the tips of her long hands. 
And to her feet. She rose her height, and said : 

comedy; Euterpe, of lyric poetry; Terpsichore, of the choral song 
and dance ; Erato, of amorous poetry ; Calliope, of the epic ; Urania, 
of astronomy ; Polyhymnia, of lofty hymns. Apollo is their leader. 
— Graces. These were the goddesses of charm and loveliness, 
attendants on Aphrodite, the Queen of Love, and associated by 
Hesiod with the Muses. The ancients do not agree as to their 
number, but Hesiod and Pindar regard them as three : Aglaia, 
Euphrosyne, and Thalia. How were the Muses and Graces here 
represented, and why are they introduced ? 

16. Lute. Describe its appearance. 

17. Hall. Gain some idea of its appearance from II. 416 ; VI. 
334 ; II. 62-71 ; IV. 206-8. Was it Greek or Gothic ? 

20. Wallace compares The Gardener's Daughter 12-13 : 

All grace 
Summed up and closed in little ; — Juliet. . . . 

Bristed objects {Amer. Rev. VIII. 33): 'The sketch is too 
shadowy, methinks ; not definiteness enough of touch in it.' 

21. The Princess. Of what age ? Cf. VI. 234; II. 92-93- 

24. Bristed criticizes the use of power as a dissyllable. 

25. Arched brows. Cf. 406. 

27. Her height. An adverbial accusative. 



38 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

* We give you welcome ; not without redound 
Of use and glory to yourselves ye come, 
The first-fruits of the stranger ; aftertime, 30 

And that full voice which circles round the grave, 
Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me. 
What ! are the ladies of your land so tall ? ' 
' We of the court ' said Cyril. ' From the court ' 
She answered ; ' then ye know the Prince 1 ' and he : 35 

* The climax of his age ! as tho' there were 
One rose in all the world, your highness that, 
He worships your ideal' She replied : 
' We scarcely thought in our own hall to hear 
This barren verbiage, current among men, 40 

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment. 
Your flight from out your bookless wilds would seem 
As arguing love of knowledge and of power ; 
Your language proves you still the child. Indeed, 
We dream not of him ; when we set our hand 45 

To this great work, we purposed with ourself 
Never to wed. You likewise will do well. 
Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling 
The tricks which make us toys of men, that so, 

28. Redound. Abundant return by way of result. 

30. First-fruits. A Biblical word ; cf. Deut. 26. i-io. 

31. Fame. 

32. Mingled. Cf. V. 401. 

35. What does her question indicate .-' 

36. Climax. Summit, acme. 

38. Your ideal. His conception of you. Cf. III. 193; IV. 430. 
Dawson says : ' He worships the Princess herself as his ideal, and 
puts one for the other with a confusion of thought pardonable 
under the circumstances.' 

43-44. Cf. I. 134-6; VII. 221. 

49. Luce (p. 237) quotes Shelley, Peter Bell the Third III. 10 : 

Things whose trade is over ladies 

To lean and flirt and stare and simper, 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 39 

Some future time, if so indeed you will, 50 

You may with those self-styled our lords ally 
Your fortunes justlier balanced, scale with scale.' 

At those high words, we, conscious of ourselves, 
Perused the matting ; then an officer 

Rose up, and read the statutes, such as these : 55 

Not for three years to correspond with home ; 
Not for three years to cross the liberties ; 
Not for three years to speak with any men ; 
And many more, which hastily subscribed, 
We entered on the boards ; and ' Now,' she cried, 60 

' Ye are green wood, see ye warp not. Look, our hall ! 
Our statues ! — not of those that men desire. 
Sleek odalisques, or oracles of mode. 
Nor stunted squaws of West or East ; but she 
That taught the Sabine how to rule, and she 65 

Till all that is divine in woman 
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, 
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper. 

52. Cf. VII. 290-1. 

53. Conscious of ourselves. What was the feeling ? 

60. Entered on the boards. Registered as students. 

61. Hayward {EcL Mag. XV. 1 5) criticizes -the metre of this verse. 

63. Odalisques. Female slaves in an Eastern harem. — Mode. 
Fashion; a Gallicism. 

64. She. ' The second King of Rome, Numa, was a Sabine of 
the city of Cures. He was believed to have received the laws, 
both civil and religious, which he instituted at Rome, from the 
nymph Egeria, whose society he sought in the recesses of the forest 
of Aricia' (Dawson). Cf. The Palace of Art : 

Or hollowing one hand against his ear, 

To list a footfall, ere he saw 
The wood-nymph, stayed the Ausonian king to hear 

Of wisdom and of law. 

See also Byron, Childe Harold IV. cxv-cxix. 



40 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

The foundress of the Babylonian wall, 
The Carian Artemisia strong in war, 
The Rhodope that built the pyramid, 
Clelia, Cornelia, with the Palmyrene 

66. ' This was Semiramis, wife of Ninus, a legendary personage, 
to whom are ascribed innumerable marvelous deeds and heroic 
achievements. The gigantic city of Babylon is only one of many 
that she is said to have built. She is supposed to have lived about 
B.C. 2182' (Wallace). 

67. Artemisia. ' When Xerxes invaded Greece, she voluntarily 
joined his fleet with five beautiful ships, and in the battle of Salamis 
(B.C. 480) she distinguished herself by her prudence, courage, and 
perseverance, for which she was afterwards highly honored by the 
Persian king.' According to Herodotus (VIII. 87), in order to 
escape from the battle, she bore down on a friendly ship and sank it. 

68. Rhodope. ' Some of the Grecians erroneously say that this 
pyramid is the work of the courtesan Rhodopis ; but they evidently 
appear to me ignorant who Rhodopis was, for they would not 
else have attributed to her the building of such a pyramid, on which, 
so to speak, numberless thousands of talents w^ere expended; 
besides, RhodSpis flourished in the reign of Amasis, and not at 
this time; for she was very many years later than those kings who 
left these pyramids. By birth she was a Thracian, servant to 
ladmon. . . . RhodSpis was made free, and continued in Egypt, 
and, being very lovely, acquired great riches for a person of her 
condition, though no way sufficient to erect such a pyramid. . . . 
The courtesans of Nancratis are generally very lovely ; for, in the 
first place, this one, of whom this account is given, became so 
famous that all the Greeks became familiar with the name of Rho- 
dSpis,' etc. (Herodotus II. 134-5). Notice Tennyson's change of 
accent in the word. 

' It has been shown by Bunsen and others that 

The Rhodope that built the pyramid 

was Nitocris, the beautiful Egyptian queen who was the heroine of 
so many legends' (Wharton, Sappho, p. 6). 

Did Tennyson mean to suggest that the Princess's inaccuracy was 
a characteristically feminine trait ? How does 68 agree with 63 .? 

69. Clelia. Properly Clcelia. * A Roman virgin, who was one 
of the hostages given to Porsena with other maidens and boys, is 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 41 

That fought Aurelian, and the Roman brows 7° 

Of Agrippina. Dwell with these, and lose 

said to have escaped from the Etruscan camp and to have swum 
across the Tiber to Rome. She was sent back by the Romans to 
Porsena, who was so struck with her gallant deed that he not only 
set her at liberty, but allowed her to take with her a part of the 
hostages ; she chose those under age, as they were most exposed 
to ill treatment.' The Roman people rewarded her with the statue 
of a female on horseback, which was erected in the Sacred Way. 

Cornelia. * As the daughter of the conqueror of Hannibal, the 
mother of the Gracchi, and the mother-in-law of the taker of Car- 
thage and Numantia, Cornelia occupies a prouder position than any 
other woman in Roman history. . . . The Roman people erected a 
statue to her, with the inscription: Cornelia, mother of the 
Gracchi.' 

Zenobia. After the death of her husband (about 266), she suc- 
ceeded him. ' She appeared in martial attire at the head of the 
troops, shared their toils both on horseback and on foot, was at 
once liberal and prudent in the administration of the revenues, 
strict in dispensing justice, merciful in the exercise of power.' In 
A.D. 272 she was made prisoner by the Emperor Aurelian. ' Loaded 
with costly jewels, fettered hand and foot with shackles of gold, 
she was led by a golden chain before the chariot of Aurelian along 
the Sacred Way, while all Rome gazed with eager curiosity on the 
Arabian princess.' See the account in Gibbon. 

70-71. The Roman brows Of Agrippina. ' This lady, the grand- 
daughter of the Emperor Augustus and the wife of his general, Ger- 
manicus, was another typical Roman matron, cultured, courageous, 
and devoted to her husband and family. She died a.d. 33. The 
form of this clause is borrowed from the classics ; thus Homer has : 

TolaL 5^ Kal fiericKp' ieprj U TrjXe/xdxoio Odyssey II. 409), 
"And among them spake the godlike strength of Telemachus" 

{i.e. "Telemachus, that goodly youth "), and Horace: 

. . . inquit sententia dia Catonis (Satires I. ii. 32), 
"... said the divine judgment of Cato " 

{i.e. " Cato divinely wise "). Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost VI. 355 : 
" where the might of Gabriel fought " {i.e. " Gabriel, the mighty " ). 



42 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

Convention, since to look on noble forms 

Makes noble thro' the sensuous organism 

That which is higher. O lift your natures up ; 

Embrace our aims ; work out your freedom. Girls, 75 

Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed ; ^^~" 

Drink deep, until the habits of the slave, 

The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 

And slander, die. Better not be at all 

Than not be noble. Leave us ; you may go ; 80 

To-day the Lady Psyche will harangue 

The fresh arrivals of the week before ; 

The special form of the periphrasis in the text is most appropriate ; 
the Princess is pointing out the marble statue of Agrippina, of 
which, no doubt, the brows would indicate the dignity of that 
lady's character.' . . . 

' The statues are those of eight of the most eminent women of 
antiquity, representing respectively legislative sagacity, political 
enterprise, military prowess, architectural skill, physical courage, 
intellectual culture, imperial ambition, and wifely devotion ' (Wal- 
lace). 

For other statues in this hall, see IV. 207-S ; VI. 347-8. 

72-74. Since . . . higher. Is this true t Dawson quotes Shelley 
{Prince Athanasc II. i. 15-17) : 

' The mind becomes that which it contemplates ' — 
And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing 
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men. 

How does this agree with 2 Cor. 3. 18 } 

75-76. cf. V. 409-413- 

76. Fountain sealed. Cf. Canticles IV. 12. 

77. Luce says (p. 238) : ' She used Pope's phrase, " Drink deep," 
and followed it with words of high purpose. With such a woman 
to tend it, the drooping flower of knowledge would in due time be 
changed to fruit of wisdom. This is fairly certain from the promi- 
nence she gave to art and moral teaching.' 

77-78. Cf. p. xli. 

79-80. Better . . . noble. Memorize. 

80. Us. The plural of royalty. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 43 

For they press in from all the provinces, 
And fill the hive.' 

She spoke, and bowing waved 
Dismissal ; back again we crossed the court 85 

To Lady Psyche's. As we entered in. 
There sat along the forms, like morning doves 
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch, 
A patient range of pupils ; she herself 

Erect behind a desk of satin-wood, 90 

A quick brunette, well-molded, falcon-eyed, 
And on the hither side, or so she looked. 
Of twenty summers. At her left, a child. 
In shining draperies, headed like a star. 
Her maiden babe, a double April old, 95 

Aglaia slept. We sat ; the Lady glanced ; 
Then Florian — but no livelier than the dame 

84. Hive. Cf. IV. 514. 
87. Doves. Cf. IV. 150. 

93. Summers. How is the child's age expressed (95) ? 

94. Shining draperies. Cf. VI. 118. — Headed like a star. Col- 
lins remarks : * So Homer of Astyanax : 

'EKTopidrju dyairrjTbv oKlyKLOV aar^pi KoKcp 
Hector's loved son, like unto a beautiful star. 

It is worth noticing that the only beauty in Hobbes' translation of 
the /had is in his version of this passage : 

' And, like a star, upon her bosom lay 
His beautiful and shining golden head.' 

Hallam Tennyson says : ' With bright golden hair' (Wallace). 

96. The Lady glanced. Cf. 285. How could she have the self- 
possession to go on with so eloquent a lecture .'' Note whether, in 
the sequel, she seems so strong and self-contained a character as 
this would imply. 

97. Dame. Dawson's comment is : ' This is an outright slander. 
Ovid is the authority for this story about Midas, and he distinctly 
says it was a barber who was unable to keep the secret. Tennyson 



44 THE PRINCESS: [part ir. 

That whispered ' Asses' ears ' among the sedge — 

' My sister.' ' Comely, too, by all that 's fair,' 

Said Cyril. ' O hush, hush ! ' and she began. loo 

'This world was once a fluid haze of light, 
Till toward the centre set the starry tides, 

follows Chaucer. . . . The passage alluded to is in the Wife of 
BatJi's Tale.'' The passage runs as follows : 

That, save his wyf, ther wiste of it na-mo. 
He loved hire most, and trusted hir also ; 
He preyede hir that to no creature 
She sholde tellen of his disfigure. 



And sith she dorste telle it to no man, 
Doun to a mareys faste by she ran ; 
Til she came there, hir herte was a-fyre, 
And, as a bitore bombleth in the myre 
She leyde hir mouth un-to the water doun : 
' Biwreye me nat, thou water, with thy soun,' 
Quod she, ' to thee I telle it, and namo ; 
Myn housbond hath longe asses eres two ! 
Now is myn herte all hool, now it is oute ; 
I mighte no lenger kepe it, out of doute.' 

One of these lines may have suggested that in Claribel : 

At eve the beetle boometh. 

Bitterns boom, but do beetles? 

loi. Rolfe and Collins compare Prior's Alma I. 369-378: 

She kindly talk'd, at least three hours, 
Of plastic forms, and mental powers ; 
Described our pre-existing station 
Before this vile terrene creation ; 
And lest I should grow wearied, madam. 
To cut things short, came down to Adam ; 
From whence, as fast as she was able, 
She drowns the world, and builds up Babel ; 
Thro' Syria, Persia, Greece, she goes. 
And takes the Romans in the close. 

The nebular hypothesis here set forth was first suggested by 
Laplace, about the beginning of the present century. Cf. the 
reference in In Memoriam CXVIII. 7-12. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 45 

And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast 

The planets ; then the monster, then the man ; 

Tattooed or woaded, winter-clad in skins, 105 

Raw from the prime, and crushing down his mate ; 

As yet we find in barbarous isles, — and here 

Among the lowest.' 

Thereupon she took 
A bird's-eye view of all the ungracious past ; 
Glanced at the legendary Amazon no 

As emblematic of a nobler age ; 
Appraised the Lycian custom, spoke of those 
That lay at wine with Lar and Lucumo ; 

105. Woaded. Dyed with woad, a former substitute for indigo. 
It is identified with vitrtan, with which, according to Caesar, the 
ancient Britons painted their bodies. 

106. Prime. For the meaning of this word cf. /;/ Memoriam 

LVI: 

Dragons of the prime, 
That tare each other in their sUme, 
Were mellow music matched with him. 

112. Lycian custom. Herodotus I. 173: 'They have one cus- 
tom pecuhar to themselves, ... for they take their name from their 
mothers, and not from their fathers ; so that if any one ask another 
who he is, he will describe himself by his mother's side, and reckon 
up his maternal ancestry in the female line.' 

113. ' That is, the Etruscan women, who in the paintings at Vol- 
terra are depicted as sharing the banquets with their husbands. Lar 
or Lars was an honorary appellation in Etruria, and = the English 
Lord (cf. Mac'aulay, Horatius : "Lars Porsena of Clusium," etc.) ; 
and Lucumo was a title given to the Etruscan princes and priests, 
like the Roma.n _paMczus ' (Rolfe). 

Dawson says : * In the paintings at Volterra the females are 
represented seated at banquets with their husbands and mixing 
freely in society. From the same source we learn that girls were 
sent to school, and we may argue from the number of rolls in the 
pupils' hands that the higher education was not neglected.' He 
refers to Chambers' Papers for the People, Art. ' Sepulchres of 
Etruria,' p. 14. Otfried Miiller, an authority on the subject, tells us 



46 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

Ran down the Persian, Grecian, Roman lines 

Of empire, and the woman's state in each, 115 

How far from just ; till, warming with her theme, 

She fulmined out her scorn of laws Salique, 

And little-footed China ; touched on Mahomet 

With much contempt, and came to chivalry, 

When some respect, however slight, was paid 120 

To woman — superstition all awry; 

However, then commenced the dawn ; a beam 

Had slanted forward, falling in a land 

Of promise ; fruit would follow. Deep, indeed, 

Their debt of thanks to her who first had dared 125 

To leap the rotten pales of prejudice, 

Disyoke their necks from custom, and assert 

None lordlier than themselves but that which made 

Woman and man. She had founded ; they must build. 

{Die Etrtisker I. 376) that the ' Lycian custom ' prevailed in Etruria, 
and conjectures that Maecenas was a maternal name of the cele- 
brated friend of Augustus. 

117. Fulmined. Thundered. Q,i.W\X.on, Paradise Regained IN. ' 
270. — Laws Salique. Cf. //en. V. I. ii. : 

The land Salique is in Germany, 
Between the floods of Sala and of Elbe ; 
Where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons, 



Established then this law ; to wit, no female 
Should be inheritrix in Salique land 



Scan the line, and cf. the scan- 
sion of IV. 309. On Mahomet, Hallam Tennyson asks : ' Does 
she allude to a report once popular that Mahomet denied that 
women have souls, or had she heard that according to the Moham- 
medan doctrine hell was chiefly peopled with women ? ' (Wallace.) 

121. Superstition all awry. What is the syntactical function 
of this phrase ? 

124. Fruit. Mixed metaphor? 

126. Pales. Cf. In Metnoriam CXI. 8. 

128. That which. One rather expects Him who. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 47 

Here might they learn whatever men were taught; 130 

Let them not fear. Some said their heads were less ; 

Some men's were small ; not they the least of men ; 

For often fineness compensated size ; 

Besides, the brain was like the hand, and grew 

With using; thence the man's, if more, was more. 135 

He took advantage of his strength to be 

First in the field ; some ages had been lost ; 

But woman ripened earlier, and her life 

Was longer ; and albeit their glorious names 

Were fewer, scattered stars, yet since in truth 140 

The highest is the measure of the man, 

And not the Kaffir, Hottentot, Malay, 

Nor those horn-handed breakers of the glebe, 

But Homer, Plato, Verulam ; even so 

With woman. And in arts of government 145 

Elizabeth and others ; arts of war 

The peasant Joan and others ; arts of grace 

Sappho and others, vied with any man : 

130. Cf. 367. 

132. Is not men here used in two different senses ? 

143. Cf. our humorous * Horny-handed sons of toil.' 

144. Homer, Plato, Verulam. Ci. The Palace of Art : 

And there the Ionian father of the rest ; 

A milUon wrinkles carved his skin ; 
A hundred winters snowed upon his breast, 

From cheek and throat and chin. 



And thro' the topmost Oriel's colored flame 

Two godlike faces gazed below ; 
Plato the wise, and large-browed Verulam, 

The first of those who know. 

147. Joan. Cf. Mark Twain's book about her, originally pub- 
lished as a serial in Harper^s 3Iagazine. 

148. Sappho. Perhaps you may sometime see a beautiful little 
volume with this title, by H. T. Wharton. If so, do not fail to read 



48 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

And, last not least, she who had left her place, 

And bowed her state to them, that they might grow 15° 

To use and power on this oasis, lapt 

In the arms of leisure, sacred from the blight 

Of ancient influence and scorn. 

At last 
She rose upon a wind of prophecy, 
Dilating on the future : ' Everywhere iSS 

it. I quote certain extracts : ' Such was her unique renown that 
she was called "The Poetess," just as Homer was "The Poet." 
Plato numbers her among the Wise. Plutarch speaks of the grace 
of her poems acting on her listeners like an enchantment' (p. 27). 
' Her image was engraved on the coins of Mitylene, — " though she 
was a woman," as Aristotle remarks' (p. 29). Addison, in Spec- 
tator, No. 223, says of her works: 'They are filled with such 
bewitching tenderness and rapture that it might have been danger- 
ous to have given them a reading' (cf. p. 31). Theodore Watts 
has written of her : * Never before these songs were sung, and never 
since, did the human soul in the grip of a fiery passion utter a cry 
like hers ; and, from the executive point of view, in directness, in 
lucidity, in that high imperious verbal economy which only Nature 
can teach the artist, she has no equal, and none worthy to take the 
place of second ' (p. vii). Swinburne has authority for speaking of 

The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness. 

(Cf. p. 26.) The Sapphic metre is well represented by the following 
from Swinburne : 

All the night sleep came not upon my eyelids, 
Shed not dew, nor shook nor unclosed a feather, 
Yet with lips shut close and with eyes of iron 
Stood and beheld me. 

(Cf. p. 46.) Tennyson refers to her in Leonine E/e^mcs 1 2, Sind 
imitates her most famous poem in Eleanor e 1 27-141. She * is said 
to have been at the zenith of her fame about the year 610 B.C. 
During her lifetime Jeremiah first began to prophesy (628 B.C.), 
Daniel was carried away to Babylon (606 B.C.),' etc. (p. i). 

151. Oasis. Pronounce. 

155 ff. How does this differ from VH. 239 ff. .? 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 49 

Two heads in council, two beside the hearth, 

Two in the tangled business of the world, 

Two in the liberal offices of life, 

Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss 

Of science, and the secrets of the mind ; i6o 

Musician, painter, sculptor, critic, more ; 

And everywhere the broad and bounteous Earth 

Should bear a double growth of those rare souls. 

Poets, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.' 

She ended here, and beckoned us ; the rest 165 

Parted ; and, glowing full-faced welcome, she 
Began to address us, and was moving on 
In gratulation, till, as when a boat 
Tacks, and the slackened sail flaps, all her voice 
Faltering and fluttering in her throat, she cried, 170 

' My brother ! ' ' Well, my sister.' ' O,' she said, 
' What do you here ? and in this dress ? and these .? 
Why, who are these ? a wolf within the fold ! 
A pack of wolves ! the Lord be gracious to me ! 
A plot, a plot, a plot, to ruin all ! ' i75 

' No plot, no plot,' he answered. ' Wretched boy, 

164. Memorize. Cf. Prol. 132; III. 256; VII. 159. Notice a 
metrical peculiarity in this line, and cf. IV. 511. 

165 ff. See p. xli. 

166. Parted. Cf. VI. 202. — Glowing full-faced welcome. 
Because of the recognition (cf. 285) ? 

168-70. Till as when ... in her throat. ' Notice the skill 
with which the metre of this passage is distorted to correspond 
to the sense. The confused structure of 169, with pauses in the 
middle of the first and fourth feet (a trochee and a spondee respec- 
tively), and the introduction into 170 of two extra syllables that 
must be hastened over, seem to sympathize with the shock, the 
interruption, and the tremor, which the poet is describing. Cf. for 
similar effects IV. 162-7, 195, 370, 461; VI. 69 ; VII. 210, 230' 
(Wallace). 



50 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

How saw you not the inscription on the gate, 
Let no man enter in on pain of death ' ? 

* And if I had/ he answered, ' who could think 

The softer Adams of your Academe, i8o 

O sister. Sirens tho' they be, were such 

As chanted on the blanching bones of men ? ' 

' But you will find it otherwise,' she said. 

'You jest : ill jesting with edge-tools ! My vow 

Binds me to speak, and O that iron will, 185 

That axelike edge unturnable, our Head, 

The Princess.' ' Well then. Psyche, take my life, 

And nail me like a weasel on a grange 

For warning ; bury me beside the gate. 

And cut this epitaph above my bones : 190 

Here lies a brother by a sister slain^ 

All for the commoji good of womankind.^ 

' Let me die too,' said Cyril, ' having seen 

And heard the Lady Psyche.' 

I struck in : 

* Albeit so masked. Madam, I love the truth ; 195 
Receive it ; and in me behold the Prince 

Your countryman, affianced years ago 

To the Lady Ida ; here, for here she was. 

And thus (what other way was left ?) I came.' 

' O Sir, O Prince, I have no country, none ; 200 

If any, this ; but none. Whate'er I was 

178. Cf. VI. 306-8. To what century would you refer such a 
threat.? It is evidently modeled on Dante's 

All hope abandon, ye who enter in. 

180. Academe. Probably from Shakespeare, Z. L. L. I. i. 13. 

181. Sirens. Cf. IV. 44-48 and the Odyssev, Bk. XII. 

184. The proverb is found in Beaumont and Fletcher, and 
earlier. 

185. Iron will. Cf. I. 47 ; VI. 102. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 51 

Disrooted, what I am is grafted here. 

Affianced, Sir ? Love-whispers may not breathe 

Within this vestal limit, and how should I, 

Who am not mine, say, live ? The thunderbolt 205 

Hangs silent ; but prepare ; I speak ; it falls.' 

'Yet pause,' I said: 'for that inscription there, 

I think no more of deadly lurks therein 

Than in a clapper clapping in a garth. 

To scare the fowl from fruit ; if more there be, 210 

If more and acted on, what follows ? war ; 

Your own work marred ; for this your Academe, 

Whichever side be victor, in the halloo 

Will topple to the trumpet down, and pass 

With all fair theories only made to gild 215 

A stormless summer.' ' Let the Princess judge 

Of that ' she said ; ' farewell. Sir — and to you. 

I shudder at the sequel, but I go.' 

'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I rejoined, . 
' The fifth in line from that old Florian — 220 

Yet hangs his portrait in my father's hall 
(The gaunt old Baron with his beetle brow 
Sun-shaded in the heat of dusty fights) 

205. Thunderbolt. Cf. Prol. 43. 

207. For. As for. 

209. Garth. Garden. 

210. Fowl. Meaning.'' 

222. Beetle. A difficult but interesting word. Either ' shaggy, 
bushy,' or 'jutting, prominent' — it is hard to determine which — 
and often with the suggestion of ' scowhng, lowering.' — Brow. 
Originally beetle was applied to eyebrows. Here the word seems to 
mean ' forehead.' 

223. Sun-shaded. The reference of the word is not clear. 
Wallace explains : ' Shaded from the sun by the palm of his 
hand ' ; but one would hardly continue to hold one's hand thus 
' in the heat of dusty fights.' On the other hand, Woodberry un- 



52 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

As he bestrode my Grandsire, when he fell, 

And all else fled ? we point to it, and we say, 225 

The loyal warmth of Florian is not cold, 

But branches current yet in kindred veins.' 

'Are you that Psyche,' Florian added; 'she 

With whom I sang about the morning hills, 

Flung ball, flew kite, and raced the purple fly, 230 

derstands the 'jutting eyebrows' as being ' so shaggy as to shade the 
eyes from the sunlight in a fight ' ; but why in a fight rather than at 
any other time when the sun shone ? and did the sun always shine 
during a fight ? It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the fault 
is Tennyson's : who is sun-shaded, or what ? and how ? 

224. Bestrode. Rolfe properly says : To defend him. Cf. 
Shakespeare, C. of E. V. i. 192 : 

When I bestrid thee in the wars, and took 
Deep scars to save thy life ; 

and I Hen. IV. V. i. 122 : ' Hal, if thou see me down in the battle, 
and bestride me, so ; 't is a point of friendship.' Another good 
illustration is from Heywood's The Royal King and the Loyal Sub- 
ject I. i. : 

Twice that perilous day- 
Did he bestride me ; and beneath his targe 
Methought that instant did I lie as safe 
As in my best and strongest citadel, 
The whilst his bright sword, like the bolt of Jove, 
Pierced the steel crests of barbarous infidels, 
And flatted them with earth. 

Grandsire. Probably meaning ancestor in general. Does this 
description date the grandsire's epoch ? 

229. Morning hills. Cf. (Enone 46-48 : 

I waited underneath the dawning hills ; 
Aloft the mountain lawn was dewy-dark, 
And dewy-dark aloft the mountain pine. 

Also T. of Shrew II. i. 174 : 

As morning roses newly washed with dew. 

Cf. 'morning fields,' Hen. V. IV. ii. 40. 

230. Fly. Butterfly. 



FART II.] A MEDLEY. 53 

And snared the squirrel of the glen ? are you 

That Psyche, wont to bind my throbbing brow, 

To smooth my pillow, mix the foaming draught 

Of fever, tell me pleasant tales, and read 

My sickness down to happy dreams ? are you 235 

That brother-sister Psyche, both in one ? 

You were that Psyche, but what are you now ? ' 

' You are that Psyche,' Cyril said, ' for whom 

I would be that for ever which I seem. 

Woman, if I might sit beside your feet, 240 

And glean your scattered sapience.' 

Then once more, 
'Are you that Lady Psyche,' I began, 
' That on her bridal morn, before she past 
From all her old companions, when the king 
Kissed her pale cheek, declared that ancient ties 245 

Would still be dear beyond the southern hills ; 
That were there any of our people there 
In want or peril, there was one to hear 
And help them ? Look ! for such are these and L' 
'Are you that Psyche,' Florian asked, 'to whom, 250 

In gentler days, your arrow-wounded fawn 
Came flying while you sat beside the well ? 

238-241. What is the sentiment that here actuates Cyril, — that 
indicated by I. 77-80, by II. 99, or merely the desire to save his life } 
Cf. 193-4. 

240. See p. xli. 

241. Does Cyril here employ the tone of banter or of earnest- 
ness ? 

242 ff. Observe how skillfully the poet at once characterizes 
Psyche and relates her past. 

245. Pale. Was Psyche dark or light 1 

251. Arrow- wounded fawn. Collins compares ^;z. VII. 483-504, 
the account of Sylvia's pet stag and its wounding. Perhaps a hint 
may have been derived from the melancholy Jaques's sympathy, A. 
Y. Z. II. i. 33-66. 



54 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

The creature laid his muzzle on your lap, 

And sobbed, and you sobbed with it, and the blood 

Was sprinkled on your kirtle, and you wept. 255 

That was fawn's blood, not brother's, yet you wept. 

O by the bright head of my little niece, 

You were that Psyche, and what are you now ? ' 

' You are that Psyche,' Cyril said again, 

' The mother of the sweetest little maid 260 

That ever crowed for kisses.' 

' Out upon it ! ' 
She answered, ' peace ! and why should I not play 
The Spartan Mother with emotion, be 
The Lucius Junius Brutus of my kind 1 
Him you call great ; he for the common weal, 265 

The fading politics of mortal Rome, 
As I might slay this child, if good need were. 
Slew both his sons ; and I, shall I, on whom 
The secular emancipation turns 

Of half this world, be swerved from right to save 270 

A prince, a brother ? A little will I yield ; 

254. Sobbed. Cf. A. V. L. II. i. 66 : ' the sobbing deer.' 

255. Kirtle. Meaning? 

259-261. Is this cold calculation on Cyril's part? 

261. Crowed. So in Wil^ Waterproofs Lyrical Monologue 126; 
but crew in Morte d' Arthur, Ep. 10 : 'The cock crew ' (a reminis- 
cence of the New Testament ?). 

263. Spartan. The Spartans were taught to sacrifice their 
natural feelings upon the altar of the public good. 

264. Brutus. 'Resolved to maintain the freedom of the in- 
fant republic, he loved his country better than his children, and 
accordingly put to death his two sons, when they were detected in 
a conspiracy with several others of the young Roman nobles for 
the purpose of restoring the Tarquins.' He is said to have been 
elected consul e.g. 509. 

269. Secular. Derivation, and meaning here ? It is contrasted 
with fading and mortal, 266. 



TART II.] A MEDLEY. 55 

Best so, perchance, for us, and well for you. 

O hard, when love and duty clash ! I fear 

My conscience will not count me fleckless ; yet — 

Hear my conditions : promise (otherwise 275 

You perish), as you came, to slip away 

To-day, to-morrow, soon ; it shall be said. 

These women were too barbarous, would not learn ; 

They fled, who might have shamed us ; promise, all.' 

What could we else .? we promised each ; and she, 280 
Like some wild creature newly-caged, commenced 
A to-and-fro, so pacing till she paused 
By Florian ; holding out her lily arms 
Took both his hands, and smiling faintly said : 
' I knew you at the first ; tho' you have grown, 285 

You scarce have altered ; I am sad and glad 
To see you, Florian. /give thee to death, 
My brother ! it was duty spoke, not I. 
My needful seeming harshness, pardon it. 
Our mother, is she well .? ' 

With that she kissed 290 

His forehead, then, a moment after, clung 
About him, and betwixt them blossomed up 
From out a common vein of memory 
Sweet household talk, and phrases of the hearth, 

274. Fleckless. Spotless. 

275 ff. Trace the process by which Psyche has been led to keep 
three young men, imperfectly disguised (cf. 285), in a College of 
six hundred girls who had sworn to abjure men's society for three 
years — she herself being one of the Heads of the College. 

Naturam expellas furca, tatnen usque recurret (Horace, Ep. I. x. 
24). Note future illustrations of the maxim ; here is the first. 

277. No specific time is insisted upon. Why ? 

289. Needful-seeming harshness or needful seeming-harshness ? 

290. Has Tennyson caught a suggestion from Gen. 43. 27 ; 45. 
3. 15? 



56 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

And far allusion, till the gracious dews 295 

Began to glisten and to fall : and while 

They stood, so rapt, we gazing, came a voice : 

' I brought a message here from Lady Blanche.' 

Back started she, and turning round we saw 

The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood, 3°° 

Melissa, with her hand upon the lock, 

A rosy blonde, and in a college gown 

That clad her like an April daffodilly 

(Her mother's color), with her lips apart, 

And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes 3^5 

As bottom agates, seen to wave and float 

In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 

295. Gracious dews. Ci. Jul. Cces. III. ii. 197-8 : 

O, now you weep, and, I perceive, you feel 
The dint of pity ; these are gracious drops ; 

and K.John V. ii. 45-46: 

Let me wipe off this honorable dew., 
That silverly doth progress on thy cheeks, 

301. ' Nearly every person who comes on the stage makes his or 
her strongly accented bow from the forefront of the line, and 
pauses ' [quoting this, and II. 21] (Luce, Handbook, p. 432). 

302. Rosy blonde. Are we told of any other blondes.'' 

304. Her mother's. Cf. I. 231 ; III. 17 ff. — Color. Yellow. 
305-7. Dawson says : ' A parallel passage occurs in Moore, Loves 
of the Angels : 

I soon could track each thought that lay 

Gleaming within her heart, as clear 

As pebbles within brooks appear. 

And also in The Two N'oble Kins77ien I. i. [m] : 

You cannot read it there ; there through my tears, 
Like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream, 
You may behold them. 

307. Morning seas. Cf. note on 229. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 57 

So stood that same fair creature at the door. 
Then Lady Psyche, ' Ah — Melissa — you ! 
You heard us ? ' and Melissa, ' O pardon me, 3^0 

I heard, 1 could not help it, did not wish : 
But, dearest Lady, pray you fear me not, 
Nor think I bear that heart within my breast, 
To give three gallant gentlemen to death.' 
' I trust you,' said the other, 'for we two 3^5 

Were always friends, none closer, elm and vine : 
But yet your mother's jealous temperament — 
Let not your prudence, dearest, drowse, or prove 
The Danaid of a leaky vase, for fear 

This whole foundation ruin, and I lose 320 

My honor, these their lives.' ' Ah, fear me not,' 
Replied Melissa ; 'no — I would not tell, 
No, not for all Aspasia's cleverness. 
No, not to answer, Madam, all those hard things 

313-4. What form does Nature take here ? Why has she not 
the heart ? 

316. None closer. Cf. the friendship of Hermia and Helena, M. 
N. D. III. ii. 201 £f. — Elm and vine. Cf. M. N. D. IV. i. 48-49, and 
Com. of Err. II. ii. 176. The figure is classical; cf. Catullus LXII. 
49-56, and Ovid, Amor. II. xvi. 41-42 : 

Ulmus amat vitem, vitis non deserit ulmum ; 
Separor a domina cur ego saepe mea ? 

319. Danaid. The Danaids were punished in Hades for the 
murder of their husbands by being compelled everlastingly to pour 
water into a vessel full of holes. 

Do these young women talk naturally, or does Tennyson make 
them talk in such a way as to enable him to indulge in graceful 
learned allusion .^ 

320. Ruin. Cf. Lucretius 40 : 

Ruining along the illimitable inane. 

323. Aspasia. The friend of Pericles, a most accomplished 
woman. 

324. A harsh line. 



58 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

That Sheba came to ask of Solomon.' 325 

' Be it so ' the other, ' that we still may lead 

The new light up, and culminate in peace ; 

For Solomon may come to Sheba yet.' 

Said Cyril, ' Madam, he the wisest man 

Feasted the woman wisest then, in halls 330 

Of Lebanonian cedar : nor should you 

(Tho', Madam, you should answer, we would ask) 

Less welcome find among us, if you came 

Among us, debtors for our lives to you. 

Myself for something more.' He said not what ; 335 

But 'Thanks,' she answered ; 'go ; we have been too long 

Together ; keep your hoods about the face ; 

They do so that affect abstraction here. 

Speak little ; mix not with the rest ; and hold 

Your promise ; all, I trust, may yet be well.' 34° 

We turned to go, but Cyril took the child, 
And held her round the knees against his waist, 
And blew the swoln cheek of a trumpeter, 
While Psyche watched them, smiling, and the child 
Pushed her flat hand against his face and laughed ; 345 

And thus our conference closed. 

And then we strolled 
For half the day thro' stately theatres 

325. Sheba. Not the name of a woman, but of a country. Cf. 
I Kings 10. 1-13 ; 2 Chron. 9. 1-12. But in all periods of English 
literature it has been common to assume that Sheba (or Saba, fol- 
lowing the Latin) was her own name. Thus Hen. VIII. V. v. 24-26 : 

Saba was never 
More covetous of wisdom and fair virtue 
Than this pure soul shall be. 

331. Lebanonian cedar. Cf. i Kings 5. 6; 7. i ; 9. i, 10, 11. 
335. What was it ? 
341. Cf. 260. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 59 

Benched crescent-wise. In each we sat, we heard 

The grave Professor. On the lecture slate 

The circle rounded under female hands 350 

With flawless demonstration ; followed then 

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, 

With scraps of thundrous epic lilted out 

By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies 

And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long 355 

That on the stretched forefinger of all Time 

Sparkle for ever ; then we dipped in all 

That treats of whatsoever is : the State ; 

The total chronicles of man, the mind, 

The morals, something of the frame ; the rock, 360 

The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower 

Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest ; 

And whatsoever can be taught and known ; 

Till, like three horses that have broken fence 

And glutted all night long breast-deep in corn, 3^5 

We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke : 

' Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we.' 

' They hunt old trails ' said Cyril ' very well ; 

But when did woman ever yet invent ? ' 

' Ungracious ! ' answered Florian ; 'have you learnt 37o 

No more from Psyche's lecture, you that talked 

The trash that made me sick, and almost sad ? ' 

353. Lilted out. According to Hallam Tennyson, 'declaimed 
in a feminine voice' (Wallace). 

355-7. Jewels ... for ever. Memorize. What are some of 
those jewels in this poem ? 

357. See p. xli. 

360. Something of man's bodily frame, — not much. Cf. III. 289 ff. 

366. Knowledge. Cf. T. 134. 

369. When did she ? 

371. From Psyche's lecture. What originators did she adduce ? 

372. What does Florian refer to ? 



60 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

' O trash ' he said, ' but with a kernel in it. 

Should I not call her wise, who made me wise ? 

And learnt? I learnt more from her in a flash, 375 

Than if my brainpan were an empty hull. 

And every Muse tumbled a science in. 

A thousand hearts lie fallow in these halls, 

And round these halls a thousand baby loves 

Fly twanging headless arrows at the hearts, 380 

Whence follows many a vacant pang ; but O 

With me. Sir, entered in the bigger boy, 

The Head of all the golden-shafted firm, 

The long-limbed lad that had a Psyche too ; 

He cleft me thro' the stomacher. And now 385 

What think you of it, Florian t do I chase 

The substance or the shadow ? will it hold ? 

I have no sorcerer's malison on me. 

No ghostly hauntings like His Highness. I 

Flatter myself that always everywhere 390 

I know the substance when I see it. Well, 

Are castles shadows ? Three -of them t Is she, 

The sweet proprietress, a shadow } If not. 

Shall those three castles patch my tattered coat ? 



375. Learnt more from her. Cf. L. L. L. IV. iii. 299-354. 

377. See p. xli. 

378. Thousand. Is this to be taken literally ? Cf. 448. 

383. Head. Cupid. —Golden-shafted. According to Ovid, J/^/. 
I. 470. 

384. Psyche. The story of Cupid and Psyche is to be found in 
Apuleius. In our time William Morris has related iU in The 
Earthly Paradise. Cf. Gayley's Classic Myths. 

387. Substance or the shadow. Cf. I. 9. 

388. Malison. A French form of the Latin derivative maledic- 
tion, like benison for benediction ; used in * romantic ' writing. 

391. Substance. A pun like coat, 394 .!* 
394. Three castles. Cf. I. 78. 



PART II.] A MEDLEY. 61 

For dear are those three castles to my wants, 395 

And dear is sister Psyche to my heart, 

And two dear things are one of double worth; 

And much I might have said, but that my zone 

Unmanned me ; then the Doctors ! O to hear 

The Doctors ! O to watch the thirsty plants 400 

Imbibing ! once or twice I thought to roar, 

To break my chain, to shake my mane ; but thou 

Modulate me, soul of mincing mimicry ! 

Make liquid treble of that bassoon, my throat ; 

Abase those eyes that ever loved to meet 405 

Star-sisters answering under crescent brows ; 

Abate the stride which speaks of man, and loose 

A flying charm of blushes o'er this cheek. 

Where they like swallows coming out of time 

Will wonder why they came ; but hark the bell 410 

For dinner, let us go ! ' 

And in we streamed 
Among the columns, pacing staid and still 
By twos and threes, till all from end to end 
With beauties every shade of brown and fair, 
In colors gayer than the morning mist, 415 

The long hall glittered like a bed of flowers. 
How might a man not wander from his wits 
Pierced thro' with eyes, but that I kept mine own 
Intent on her who, rapt in glorious dreams, 

399. Unmanned. Another pun. — Doctors. Cf. 354. 

402-3. See p. xli. 

403 ff. Cf. the answering passage in A.Y.L. I.iii. 117 ff. 

404. Treble. Cf. IV. 70. 

411. Dinner. Does this help to characterize Cyril .? 

415. Colors. What were the two colors of the respective sides ? 
Cf. 3-4 and 303. How would they look when placed together in 
masses ? 

419. Her. Recall how she looked, 20-27. 



62 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

The second-sight of some Astraean age, 420 

Sat compassed with Professors ; they, the while. 

Discussed a doubt and tossed it to and fro; 

A clamor thickened, mixed with inmost terms 

Of art and science ; Lady Blanche alone. 

Of faded form and haughtiest lineaments, 425 

With all her autumn tresses falsely brown. 

Shot sidelong daggers at us, a tiger-cat 

In act to spring. 

At last a solemn grace 
Concluded, and we sought the gardens ; there 
One walked reciting by herself, and one 43° 

In this hand held a volume as to read, 
And smoothed a petted peacock down with that. 
Some to a low song oared a shallop by. 
Or under arches of the marble bridge 

420. Astraean age. Rolfe comments: 'According to the old 
myth, Astrsea was the last of the deities to leave the earth in the 
Iron Age, and it was believed that she would be the first to come 
back at the return of the Golden Age. Cf. Virgil, Eclogue IV. 
6 : ' Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.' See also Milton, 
Hymn on Nativity 133: 

For if such holy song 
Enwrap our fancy long, 
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold. 



Yea, Truth and Justice then 
Will down return to men, etc. 



and Pope, Messiah : 

All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail, 
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale, etc' 

424. Lady Blanche. Contrast her in detail with Lady Psyche. 

431. As to read. Why as ? 

433. Oared. Cf. IV. 165. Better thsLXi rowed ? 

434. Marble bridge. Notice how, one by one, details are added. 



PART II.] 4 MEDLEY. 63 

Hung, shadowed from the heat ; some hid and sought 435 

In the orange thickets ; others tossed a ball 

Above the fountain-jets, and back again 

With laughter ; others lay about the lawns — 

Of the older sort — and murmured that their May 

Was passing ; what was learning unto them ? 44° 

They wished to marry ; they could rule a house ; 

Men hated learned women ; — but we three 

Sat muffled like the Fates ; and often came 

Melissa, hitting all we saw with shafts 

Of gentle satire, kin to charity, 445 

That harmed not. Then day drooped ; the chapel bells 

Called us ; we left the walks ; we mixed with those 

Six hundred maidens clad in purest white. 

Before two streams of light from wall to wall. 

While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 45° 

Groaning for power, and rolling thro' the court 

A long melodious thunder to the sound 

439. Murmured. Nature again ? 

442. Men hated. Do they? and, if so, why? 

443. MufQed. Cf. 337 ff. 

448. Purest white. How do you explain this, in the light of 
415? Tennyson, in a letter to Rolfe, dated Oct. 12, 1884, says : 
* They were in white at chapel, as we Cantabs were at our Trinity 
College Chapel in Cambridge.' Memorize the wonderful lines 448- 
455, wonderful for their sound, and for the exalted mood which they 
induce. 

449. How do there come to be ' two streams of light from wall to 
walP ? What sort of architecture do you imagine ? Have we ' storied 
windows richly dight ' ? 

452. Melodious thunder. Cf. In Memoriam LXXXVII. 5-8 : 

And heard once more in college fanes 
The storm their high-built organs make, 
And thunder-music, rolling, shake 

The prophet blazoned on the panes. 

451-3- See p. xlii. 



64 THE PRINCESS: [part ii. 

Of solemn psalms and silver litanies, 

The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven 

A blessing on her labors for the world. 455 

454. The work of Ida. A new prayer-book and hymnal ? 



Sweet and low, sweet and low, 

Wind of the western sea, 
Low, low, breathe and blow, 

Wind of the western sea ! 
Over the rolling waters go. 
Come from the dying moon, and blow. 

Blow him again to me ; 
While my little one, while my pretty one, sleeps. 

Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Rest, rest, on mother's breast. 

Father will come to thee soon ; 
Father will come to his babe in the nest, 
Silver sails all out of the west 

Under the silver moon : 
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. 

Collins notes : ' In the song with its burden ... we have, of course, a 
reminiscence of Alcmena's lullaby in Theocritus XXIV. 7-9: . . . "Sleep, my 
little one, a sweet and lightsome sleep. Sleep, soul of mine."' 

In 1, 6, the epithet was originally ' dropping.' 



66 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 



III. 

Morn in the white wake of the morning star 

Came furrowing all the orient into gold. 

We rose, and each by other dressed with care, 

1-2. Memorize. Cf, Love and Duty 95-98 : 

Then when the first low matin-chirp hath grown 
Full quire, and morning driven her plow of pearl, 
Far furrowing into light the mounded rack. 
Beyond the fair green field and Eastern sea. 

Collins (p. 58) compares Greene's Orlando Fnrioso I. iii. : 

vSeest thou not Lycaon's son, 
The hardy plough-swain unto mighty Jove, 
Hath traced his silver /z/rr^wj- in the heavens? 

The suggestion seems ultimately to come from Apollonius Rhodius. 
Speaking of a meteor, he says (IV. 296) : ' For before them went a 
trail (//'/. furrow) of heavenly radiance, where they might pass.' 
Cf. III. 141, and The Princess VII. 170. He is imitated by Virgil, 

^n. II. 697-8 : 

Tum longo limite sulcus 
Dat lucem. 
('Then in a long line li?, furrow sheds a gleam.') 

Virgil, in turn, is imitated by Lucan (V. 562) and Valerius Flaccus 
(I. 568). The immediate original for the moderns is perhaps 
Claudian, Cons. Prob. et Olymp. 102 : 

Cursu rotarum 
Saucia clarescunt nubila sulco. 

The resemblance of the ripple made by a moving vessel to furrows 
had, of course, been noted by the ancients: Ap. Rh. I. 1167 ; Virgil, 
^n. V. 142, 158; Ovid, etc. See wake, i. 

Wallace comments on these two lines : ' The word-painting in 
these two lines is, as are all Tennyson's descriptions of natural 
phenomena, as faultless in truth as in form — first Venus, then an 
expanse of pale sky, gradually suffused with a golden tint, till the 
ridges of full glorious color take form as the sun comes up.' 

3. Dressed with care. Imagine the anxious fussing. 



PART in.] A MEDLEY. 67 

Descended to the court, that lay three parts 

In shadow, but the Muses' heads were touched, 5 

Above the darkness, from their native East. 

There, while we stood beside the fount, and watched 
Or seemed to watch the dancing bubble, approached 
Melissa, tinged with wan from lack of sleep. 
Or grief, and glowing round her dewy eyes lo* 

The circled Iris of a night of tears ; 
And ' Fly,' she cried, ' O fly, while yet you may ! 
My mother knows ; ' and when I asked her ' How ? ' 
' My fault ' she wept ' my fault ! and yet not mine ; 
Yet mine in part. O hear me, pardon me. 15 

My mother, 'tis her wont from night to night 
To rail at Lady Psyche and her side. 
She says the Princess should have been the Head, 
Herself and Lady Psyche the two arms ; 
And so it was agreed when first they came ; 20 

But Lady Psyche was the right hand now. 
And she the left, or not or seldom used ; 
Hers more than half the students, all the love. 
And so last night she fell to canvass you : 
Her countrywomen ! she did not envy her. 25 

" Who ever saw such wild barbarians 1 
Girls? — more like men ! " and at these words the snake, 

4. Parts. Quarters. 

6. Native East. Explain. 

8. See p. xlii. 

II. Circled Iris. Of what hue or hues .? 'Glowing,' we are told; 
and that seems to forbid the suspicion of dark rings. Red .? Hardly, 
for the rainbow is multi colored. And how round her dewy eyes ? 
At most, below them, one would think. Were Tennyson not so 
often at once exact and felicitous, there would be little point in 
raising such scruples. 

26. Barbarians. Cf. 11. 278 ; IV. 516. 

27. More like men. Cf. II. 427. 



68 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 

My secret, seemed to stir within my breast ; 

And oh, Sirs, could I help it ? but my cheek 

Began to burn and burn, and her lynx eye 3° 

To fix and make me hotter, till she laughed : 

" O marvelously modest maiden, you ! 

Men ! girls like men ! why, if they had been men 

You need not set your thoughts in rubric thus 

For wholesale comment." Pardon, I am shamed 35 

That I must needs repeat for my excuse 

What looks so little graceful ; " Men " (for still 

My mother went revolving on the word), 

" And so they are, — very Uke men indeed, — 

And with that woman closeted for hours ! " 4° 

Then came these dreadful words out one by one, 

" Why — these — are — men ; " I shuddered ; " and 

you know it." 
" O ask me nothing," I said ; " And she knows too, 
And she conceals it." So my mother clutched 
The truth at once, but with no word from me ; 45 

And now thus early risen she goes to inform 
The Princess ; Lady Psyche will be crushed ; 
But you may yet be saved, and therefore fly ; 
But heal me with your pardon ere you go.' 

' What pardon, sweet Melissa,, for a blush ? ' 5° 

Said Cyril : ' Pale one, blush again ; than wear 
Those lilies, better blush our lives away.- 
Yet let us breathe for one hour more in Heaven,' 
He added, ' lest some classic angel speak 
In scorn of us, " They mounted, Ganymedes, 55 

34. Rubric. Explain the allusion. 

55. Ganymedes. Cf. The Palace of Art : 

Or else flushed Ganymede, his rosy thigh 

Half-buried in the Eagle's down, 
Sole as a flying star shot through the sky, 

Above the pillared town. 



PART III.] A MEDLEY. 69 

To tumble, Vulcans, on the second morn." 

But I will melt this marble into wax 

To yield us farther furlough ; ' and he went. 

Melissa shook her doubtful curls, and thought 
He scarce would prosper. ' Tell us,' Florian asked, 60 

' How grew this feud betwixt the right and left.' 
'O long ago,' she said, 'betwixt these two 
Division smolders hidden ; 't is my mother 
Too jealous, often fretful as the wind 

Pent in a crevice ; much I bear with her ; .65 

I never knew my father, but she says 
(God help her) she was wedded to a fool ; 
And still she railed against the state of things. 
She had the care of Lady Ida's youth. 

And from the Queen's decease she brought her up. 70 

But when your sister came she won the heart 
Of Ida ; they were still together, grew 
(For so they said themselves) inosculated ; 
Consonant chords that shiver to one note ; 

56. Vulcans. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost I. 740-6. 

59. Doubtful. Collins (p. 16) calls attention to the Virgilian 
peculiarity suggested by this epithet. It is not the curls that are 
doubtful, but Melissa. Cf. level, IV. 12. 

61. Right and left. Cf. 19. Cf. these terms as used in legisla- 
tive assemblies. 

64. Jealous. Nature again. 

68. Still. Meaning ? Cf . I. 56. 

69. Cf. VI. 217 £f. 

73. Inosculated. 'Blent together into one. The word is gener- 
ally used in special derivative application to the case of veins and 
other vessels that have been made to run into one another, but here 
there is no doubt a closer reference to the etymology of the word, 
which is derived from the Latin oscular, ' to kiss,' and thus signifies 
primarily unity through affection' (Wallace). 

74. Collins compares Izaak Walton's Life of Donne : ' It is most 
certain that two lutes being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch, 



70 THE PRINCESS: [part iii. 

One mind in all things; yet my mother still 75 

Affirms your Psyche thieved her theories, 

And angled with them for her pupil's love ; 

She calls her plagiarist ; I know not what ; 

But I must go; I dare not tarry,' and light 

As flies the shadow of a bird, she fled. 80 

Then murmured Florian, gazing after her, 
' An open-hearted maiden, true and pure. 
If I could love, why this were she ; how pretty 
Her blushing was, and how she blushed again. 
As if to close with Cyril's random wish ; 85 

Not like your Princess crammed with erring pride, 
Nor like poor Psyche whom she drags in tow.' 

'The crane,' I said, 'may chatter of the crane. 
The dove may murmur of the dove, but I, 
An eagle, clang an eagle to the sphere. 9° 

My princess, O my princess ! — True, she errs. 
But in her own grand way ; being herself 

and then one being played upon, the other that is not touched, being 
laid upon a table at a fit distance, will, like an echo to a trumpet, 
warble a faint, audible harmony in answer to the same tune.' 
But I cannot say that I understand the line, though the illustra- 
tion is clear in its reference. 

77. Angled. In a Shakespearian sense. 

80. Notice the simile. 

81. Florian. Why does he speak when Melissa is gone, while 
Cyril pays her a direct compliment (51-53) .'' 

85. Random wish. Cf. 51. 

88-90. Collins compares Theocritus, Idyll V^. 31 : * Cicala is dear 
to cicala, and ant to ant, and hawks to hawks, but to me the Muse 
and song.' He adds Idyll X. 30-31, and Virgil, EcL II. 63-64. 

90. Clang. Cf. IV. 415, and the use of grate, IV. 107. Wallace 
renders : ' Celebrate in lordly ringing song, as contrasted with the 
harsh cry of the crane and the gentle one of the dove.' It is safe 



PART III.] A MEDLEY. 71 

Three times more noble than three score of men, 

She sees herself in every woman else ; 

And so she wears her error like a crown 95 

To blind the truth and me ; for her, and her, 

Hebes are they to hand ambrosia, mix 

The nectar ; but — ah she ! — whene'er she moves 

The Samian Here rises, and she speaks 

A Memnon smitten with the morning sun.' 100 

So saying, from the court we paced, and gained 
The terrace ranged along the Northern front. 
And leaning there on those balusters, high 
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale 

to say that no similar use of the word can be found in English. — 
Sphere. Cf. Arabian Nights 89 : 

Dark-blue the deep sphere overhead, 
Distinct with vivid stars inlaid ; 

and Ode to Meynojy 40 : 

Sure she was higher to heaven's spheres. 

94. Would it have been better if she had not ? 

97. Hebes. //. IV. 1-3 : ' Now the gods sat by Zeus and held 
assembly on the golden floor, and in the midst the lady Hebe poured 
them their nectar ; they with golden goblets pledged one another.' 

99. Samian Here. The Juno of Samos ; cf. ^n. I. 16. See 
also II. 21 ff. 

100. A colossal statue near Thebes in Egypt, the stone of which 
is said, when reached by the rays of the rising sun, to have given 
forth a sound resembling that of a breaking chord (Pausanias I. 42. 
§ 2). Cf. Palace of Art 1 7 1-2. 

103. Balusters. Pronounce. 

104. Empurpled. Hallam Tennyson explains : ' Blue in the dis- 
tance ' (Wallace). Cf. VI. 179; In Memoriam XXXVIII. 3. On 
the other hand, see VII. 187, where it means 'red.' — Champaign. 
Clear, level landscape. 

104-7. Drank . . . eyelids. Dawson compares Shelley, Epipsy- 
chidion 446-9. 



72 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 

That, blown about the foliage underneath, 105 

And sated with the innumerable rose, 

Beat balm upon our eyelids. Hither came 

Cyril, and yawning, ' O hard task,' he cried, 

' No fighting shadows here ! I forced a way 

Thro' solid opposition, crabbed and gnarled. no 

Better to clear prime forests, heave and thump 

A league of street in summer solstice down, 

Than hammer at this reverend gentlewoman. 

I knocked and, bidden, entered ; found her there 

At point to move, and settled in her eyes 115 

The green malignant light of coming storm. 

Sir, I was courteous, every phrase well-oiled 

As man's could be ; yet maiden-meek I prayed 

Concealment ; she demanded who we were. 

And why we came ? I fabled nothing fair, 120 

But, your example pilot, told her all. 

Up went the hushed amaze of hand and eye. 

But when I dwelt upon your old affiance. 

She answered sharply that I talked astray. 

I urged the fierce inscription on the gate, 125 

And our three lives. True — we had limed ourselves 

106. Innumerable. Cf. V. 13, and The Brook 134. 

109. Fighting shadows. Cf. I. 10. 

111. Prime. Primeval. 

112. Summer solstice. When? 

116. Green malignant light. Collins refers to Homer's use of 
^XavKibuiv {11. XX. 172), and says: 'It is the peculiar whity green 
glint flashing from the eye of an enraged animal— lion, tiger, cat, 
or pard — and Tennyson exactly expresses its meaning.' 

122. See p. xxiii. 

126. Limed. ' The metaphor is from the use of bird-lime, a 
sticky substance which, smeared upon branches, holds fast birds 
that settle thereon. Cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet III. iii. 68-69 - 

O limed soul, that struggling to be free 

Art more engaged ! ' (Wallace). 



PART in.] A MEDLEY. 73 

With open eyes, and we must take the chance. 

But such extremes, I told her, well might harm 

The woman's cause. "Not more than now," she said, 

" So puddled as it is with favoritism." 130 

I tried the mother's heart. Shame might befall 

Melissa, knowing, saying not she knew ; 

Her answer was " Leave me to deal with that." 

I spoke of war to come, and many deaths. 

And she replied, her duty was to speak, 135 

And duty duty, clear of consequences. 

I grew discouraged, Sir ; but since I knew 

No rock so hard but that a little wave 

May beat admission in a thousand years, 

I recommenced : " Decide not ere you pause. 140 

I find you here but in the second place, 

Some say the third — the authentic foundress you. 

I offer boldly — we will seat you highest ; 

Wink at our advent ; help my prince to gain 

His rightful bride, and here I promise you 145 

Some palace in our land, where you shall reign 

The head and heart of all our fair she-world. 

And your great name flow on with broadening time 

For ever." Well, she balanced this a little. 

And told me she would answer us to-day, 150 

Meantime be mute ; thus much, nor more, I gained.' 

128. Extremes, ^i. Of Old sat Freedom : 

Turning to scorn with lips divine 
The falsehood of extremes. 

136. Cf. (Enone 147-8 : 

And, because right is right, to follow right 
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. 

147. Head and heart. Cf. V. 439. 

148. Cf. II. 31-2. 

149. Contrast the arguments by which Psyche and Blanche are won. 



74 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 

He ceasing, came a message from the Head. 
' That afternoon the Princess rode to take 
The dip of certain strata to the North. 

Would we go with her.? we should find the land i5S 

Worth seeing ; and the river made a fall 
Out yonder ; ' then she pointed on to where 
A double hill ran up his furrowy forks 
Beyond the thick-leaved platans of the vale. 

Agreed to, this, the day fled on thro' all i6o 

Its range of duties to the appointed hour. 
Then summoned to the porch we went. She stood 
Among her maidens, higher by the head. 
Her back against a pillar, her foot on one 
Of those tame leopards. Kittenlike he rolled 165 

And pawed about her sandal. I drew near; 
I gazed. On a sudden my strange seizure came 
Upon me, the weird vision of our house ; 
The Princess Ida seemed a hollow show, 
Her gay-furred cats a painted fantasy, 170 

Her college and her maidens empty masks, 
And I myself the shadow of a dream ; 
For all things were and were not. Yet I felt 
My heart beat thick with passion and with awe ; 
Then from my breast the involuntary sigh 175 

Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes 

154. Dip. Inclination to die horizon. 

158. Furrowy forks. Explain. 

159. Thick-leaved platans. Literally from Moschus V. 11 
(Collins). 

163. Higher by the head. Cf. 99 ; II. 27. 
165. Leopards. Cf. II. 19. 

167. Seizure. Cf. I. 14, 81. Is this anything more than love- 
passion? Cf. 173-8, 'Yet . . . pulses.' 
172. Shadow of a dream. Cf. I. 18. 



PART III.] A MEDLEY. 75 

That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook 

My pulses, till to horse we got, and so 

Went forth in long retinue, following up 

The river as it narrowed to the hills. i8o 

I rode beside her, and to me she said : 
' O friend, we trust that you esteemed us not 
Too harsh to your companion yestermorn ; 
Unwillingly we spake.' ' No — not to her,' 
I answered, ' but to one of whom we spake 185 

Your Highness might have seemed the thing you say.' 
' Again ? ' she cried, ' are you ambassadresses 
From him to me ? We give you, being strange, 
A license ; speak, and let the topic die.' 

I stammered that I knew him — could have wished — 190 
' Our king expects — was there no precontract ? 
There is no truer-hearted — ah, you seem 
All he prefigured, and he could not see 
The bird of passage flying south but longed 
To follow ; surely, if Your Highness keep i95 

Your purport, you will shock him even to death, 
Or baser courses, children of despair.' 

' Poor boy,' she said, ' can he not read — no books ? 
Quoit, tennis, ball — no games ? nor deals in that 
Which men delight in, martial exercise ? 200 

To nurse a blind ideal like a girl, 
Methinks he seems no better than a girl, 
As girls were once, — as we ourself have been ; 

179. Retinue. Pronounce. 
183. Yestermorn. Cf. II. 39 ff. 

189. Is this curiosity — nature? Cf. II. 35. 

190. Stammered. Why? 
194. South. Cf. IV. 71,75. 

203. As we ourself have been. Cf. VII. 227. 



76 THE PRINCESS: [part "I- 

We had our dreams ; perhaps he mixed with them ; 

We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it, ^°5 

Being other — since we learnt our' meaning here: 

To lift the woman's fallen divinity 

Upon an even pedestal with man.' 

She paused, and added with a haughtier smile, 
' And as to precontracts, we move, my friend, ^^° 

At no man's beck, but know ourself — and thee, 

Vashti, noble Vashti ! Summoned out 
She kept her state, and left the drunken king 
To brawl at Shushan underneath the palms.' 

'Alas, your Highness breathes full East,' I said, ^^5 

' On that which leans to you. I know the Prince, 

1 prize his truth : and then how vast a work 
To assail this gray preeminence of man ! 

You grant me license ; might I use it ? Think ; 

Ere half be done perchance your life may fail ; ^^° 

Then comes the feebler heiress of your plan. 

And takes and ruins all ; and thus your pains 

May only make that footprint upon sand 

Which old-recurring waves of prejudice 

208. Even pedestal. Cf. II. 130. 

212. Vashti. Cf. Esther, Chap. i. 

215. Dawson explains: 'Referring to the dry unpleasan-^ ^^st 
winds prevalent in England.' Wallace says: 'For the mer^aphor 
(which may have been suggested by the preceding referer'-^ ^*-* ^ 
proud and defiant Oriental queen, but w^hich is derived fro'^ the 
bitter and blasting character of the east wind in England) c "f • A^^^di^y 

Court 51-53 : 

I wooed a woman once, 
But she was sharper than an eastern wind, 
And all my heart turned from her.' ;i 

218. Gray. Ancient. 
230. Savage. Cf . 26. 



PART III.] A MEDLEY. 11 

Resmooth to nothing : might I dread that you, 225 

With only Fame for spouse and your great deeds 
For issue, yet may live in vain, and miss. 
Meanwhile, what every woman counts her due. 
Love, children, happiness ? ' 

And she exclaimed, 
' Peace, you young savage of the Northern wild ! 230 

What tho' your Prince's love were like a God's, 
Have we not made ourself the sacrifice ? 
You are bold indeed ; we are not talked to thus ; 
Yet will we say for children, would they grew 
Like field-flowers everywhere ! we like them well ; 235 

But children die ; and let me tell you, girl, 
Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die ; 
They with the sun and moon renew their light 
For ever, blessing those that look on them. 
Children — that men may pluck them from our hearts, 240 
Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves — 
O — children — there is nothing upon earth 
More miserable than she that has a son 
And sees him err ! Nor would we work for fame ; 
Tho' she perhaps might reap the applause of Great, 245 

Who learns the one pou sto whence after-hands 
May move the world, tho' she herself effect 
But little ; wherefore up and act, nor shrink 
For fear our solid aim be dissipated 

By frail successors. Would, indeed, we had been, 250 

In lieu of many mortal flies, a race 

232. The sacrifice. Then it was a sacrifice ! 

246. Pou sto. 'The Princess is quoting the celebrated saying 
of Archimedes to King Hiero, That philosopher was a master of 
all the arts of applied mechanics, and, dwelling on the enormous 
mechanical powers of the lever, he exclaimed, " Give me where I 
may stand (pou sto), and I will move the world " ' (Dawson). 

251. Flies. Cf. In Memoriam L. 10. 



78 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 

Of giants living each a thousand years, 

That we might see our own work out, and watch 

The sandy footprint harden into stone.' 

I answered nothing, doubtful in myself 255 

If that strange Poet-princess, with her grand 
Imaginations, might at all be won. 
And she broke out, interpreting my thoughts : 

' No doubt we seem a kind of monster to you ; 
We are used to that ; for women, up till this 260 

Cramped under worse than South-sea-isle taboo, 
Dwarfs of the gynaeceum, fail so far 
In high desire, they know not, cannot guess 
How much their welfare is a passion to us. 
If we could give them surer, quicker proof — 265 

O if our end were less achievable 
By slow approaches than by single act 
Of immolation, any phase of death, 
We were as prompt to spring against the pikes, 
Or down the fiery gulf, as talk of it, 270 

To compass our dear sisters' liberties.' "A-i 

254. Sandy footprint. Cf. 223. 

261. Taboo. 'The word was brought home by Captain Cook's 
expedition. The South Sea islands were under the domination of 
a priesthood, which reserved to its own use anything which any of 
the members of its class might fancy, by marking it and calling it 
taboo, or devoted to religious uses ' (Dawson). 

262. Gynaeceum. The part of a Greek house reserved for the 
women, usually the rear. 

269-270. Wallace says : ' The two forms here mentioned were 
probably suggested by two legends of ancient Rome: (i) In the 
Latin War (b.c. 340) Publius Decius Mus, one of the Roman gen- 
erals, sacrificed himself on the spears of the enemy in order to secure 
the victory to his army, it having been revealed to him in a vision 
from Heaven that one army was doomed and the general of the 
other (a somewhat similar act of devotion is recorded of Arnold von 



PART III.] A MEDLEY. 79 

She bowed as if to veil a noble tear ; 
And up we came to where the river sloped 
To plunge in cataract, shattering on black blocks 
A breadth of thunder. O'er it shook the woods, 275 

And danced the color, and, below, stuck out 
The bones of some vast bulk that lived and roared 
Before man was. She gazed awhile and said, 
' As these rude bones to us, are we to her 
That will be.' ' Dare we dream of that,' I asked, 280 

' Which wrought us, as the workman and his work, 
That practice betters ? ' ' How,' she cried, ' you love 

Winkelried in the battle of Sempach, 1388, during the Swiss struggle 
for independence against the Austrians ; this hero, seeing that the 
Austrian line of spears was impregnable, gathered into his breast as 
many as he could, and falling upon them created a gap into which 
his comrades poured) ; (2) A chasm having appeared in the market- 
place of Rome, and the priests having declared that this w^ould not 
close up until there had been cast into it the chief element of Rome's 
greatness, a young noble named Marcus Curtius, thinking that this 
condition would best be fulfilled by the sacrifice of one of her sons, 
leapt into it on horseback and in full armor (b.c. 362).' 

274. See p. xlii. 

Hadley says (p- 321) that these words 'address themselves at 
once to mind and sense.' 

275. Shook the woods. Hallam Tennyson explains: 'In the 
wind made by the cataract ' (Wallace). 

276. Color. Explain. Cf. Palace of Art 35-6, 43. 

277. Cf. Prol. 15. 

282. That practice betters. Knowles says {Nineteenth Century 
XXXIII. 169) : ' He inclined somewhat to the theory of a Demiurge, 
with whom alone man comes into direct contact, saying that this was 
perhaps " the nearest explanation of the facts of the world which we 
can get " ; and this he put into the mouth of the King in the Pass- 
ing of Arthur, where he cries: 

O me ! for why is all around us here 
As if some lesser God had made the world, 
But had not force to shape it as he would, 
Till the High God behold it from beyond, 
And enter in and make it beautiful t ' 



80 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 

The metaphysics ! Read and earn our prize, 

A golden brooch ; beneath an emerald plane 

Sits Diotima, teaching him that died 285 

Of hemlock ; our device ; wrought to the life ; 

She rapt upon her subject, he on her : 

For there are schools for all.' ' And yet' I said 

' Methinks I have not found among them all 

One anatomic' ' Nay, we thought of that,' 290 

She answered, ' but it pleased us not ; in truth 

We shudder but to dream our maids should ape 

Those monstrous males that carve the living hound, 

And cram him with the fragments of the grave, 

Or in the dark dissolving human heart, 295 

And holy secrets of this microcosm, 

Dabbling a shameless hand with shameful jest, 

Encarnalize their spirits ; yet we know 

Knowledge is knowledge, and this matter hangs ; 

Howbeit ourself, foreseeing casualty, 300 

Nor willing men should come among us, learnt, 

For many weary moons before we came. 

This craft of healing. Were you sick, ourself 

Would tend upon you. To your question now, 

Which touches on the workman and his work. 305 

'• Let there be light, and there was light ; ' 't is so ; 

285. Diotima. The instructress of Socrates (Plato, Sy?nposm?n). 
288. Schools. Departments, courses. 

293. Carve the living hound. Cf. In the Children'' s Hospital 9-10. 
296. Microcosm. Explain. 

298. Encarnalize their spirits. Is this true of medical students 
generally ? 

299. Hangs. Is not yet finally decided. 
303. Cf. VII. 76 ff. 

306-313. Is this a satisfactory answer to the question in 280-2 .? 
Think it out, if you can ; if not, no matter. Look up Dawson's 
comment on p. xxxii. 

306. Gen. I. 3. 



PART III.] • A MEDLEY. 81 

For was, and is, and will be, are but is ; 

And all creation is one act at once, 

The birth of light ; but we that are not all, 

As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 310 

And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 

One act a phantom of succession ; thus 

Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow, Time ; 

But in the shadow will we work, and mold 

The woman to the fuller day.' 

She spake 3^5 

With kindled eyes ; we rode a league beyond. 
And, o'er a bridge of pinewood crossing, came 
On flowery levels underneath the crag, 
Full of all beauty. ' O how sweet,' I said, 
(For I was half-oblivious of my mask), 320 

' To linger here with one that loved us.' * Yea,' 
She answered, ' or with fair philosophies 
That lift the fancy ; for indeed these fields 
Are lovely, lovelier not the Elysian lawns, 

322. Fair philosophies. One is reminded of the fine passage in 
Coleridge's translation of Schiller's Wallenstein (Part I. Act II. 
Sc. iv) : 

The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 

The/<7zV hnnianities of old religion, 

The power, the beauty, and the majesty 

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, 

Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 

Or chasms or watery depths — all these have vanished ; 

They live no longer in the faith of reason. 

324. Elysian lawns. Cf. Homer, Od. IV. 563 ff. 

To the suggestion that this meant the plains of Troy, Tennyson 
replied (in a letter to Rolfe) : ' The " Elysian lawns " are the lawns 
of Elysium, and have nothing to do with Troy — or perhaps they 
rather refer to the Islands of the Blest' (Pindar, Olymp. 2d). The 
passage from Pindar runs : ' But evenly ever in sunlight, night and 
day, an unlaborious life the good receive ; . • . with the honored of 
the gods . . . they possess a tearless life. Then whosoever have 



82 THE PRINCESS: [part hi. 

Where paced the Demigods of old, and saw 325 

The soft white vapor streak the crowned towers 

Built to the sun ; ' then, turning to her maids, 

* Pitch our pavilion here upon the sward ; 

Lay out the viands.' At the word, they raised 

A tent of satin, elaborately wrought 33° 

With fair Corinna's triumph ; here she stood, 

been of good courage to the abiding steadfast thrice on either side 
of death, and have refrained their souls from all iniquity, travel the 
road of Zeus unto the tower of Kronos ; there round the islands of 
the blest the Ocean-breezes blow, and golden flowers are glowing, 
some from the land on trees of splendor, and some the water 
feedeth, with wreaths whereof they entwine their hands. . . . Peleus 
and Kadmos are counted of that company ; and the mother of 
Achilles . . . bare thither her son.' 

325. And saw. This seems to refer to some ancient legend ; 
but what ? 

326. Crowned. This apparently means ' surmounted by battle- 
ments or parapets.' But the term and the whole clause, though 
beautiful, are obscure to my apprehension. 

327. To the sun. Rolfe explains : ' rising sunward, lofty ' ; and 
Wallace : 'rising high into the sky' (comparing VI. 21); but I can- 
not convince myself that this is the true interpretation, or, if true, 
that the expression is precisely the best. 

329. Viands. Cf. Prol. 105. 

331. Fair Corinna's triumph. Cf. Pausanias IX. 22. § 3 : ' Now 
of Corinna, the only woman who ever wrote poetry in Tanagra, 
there is a statue in an open place in the city, and in the gymnasium 
there is a picture showing her with the fillet round her hair which 
she won at Thebes, when she overcame Pindar in singing; and I 
think she got the victory partly because she sang not as Pindar did 
in the Dorian dialect, but so that the ^Eolians could more easily 
understand her, and chiefly because she must have been the 
most beautiful woman of her day, if one may judge from the 
portrait.' 

Gildersleeve says {^Pindar, p. x) : ' Encouraged, perhaps, by 
Korinna's success, a younger poetess, Myrtis, attempted to cope 
with Pindar. She was ingloriously defeated, and sharply chidden 
by Korinna, with the sweet inconsistency of her sex.' Korinna 



PART III.] A MEDLEY. 83 

Engirt with many a florid maiden-cheek, 

The woman-conqueror ; woman-conquered there 

The bearded Victor of ten-thousand hymns, 

And all the men mourned at his side ; but we 335 

Set forth to climb ; then, climbing, Cyril kept 

With Psyche, with Melissa Florian, I 

With mine affianced. Many a little hand 

Glanced like a touch of sunshine on the rocks, 

Many a light foot shone like a jewel set 340 

In the dark crag ; and then we turned, we wound 

About the cliffs, the copses, out and in, 

Hammering and clinking, chattering stony names 

Of shale and hornblende, rag and trap and tuff. 

Amygdaloid and trachyte, till the sun 345 

Grew broader toward his death, and fell, and all 

The rosy heights came out above the lawns. 

taught Pindar one lesson which Tennyson did not always heed. 
' In his first poem,' says Gildersleeve, ' he had neglected to insert 
myths. Admonished of this omission by Korinna, and remembering 
that his monitress was herself famous for her handling of the myth, 
he crowded his next hymn with mythological figures, . . . whereupon 
she said with a smile, " One ought to sow with the hand, not with 
the whole sack." ' 

334- Bearded Victor. Pindar (522-442 e.g.). 

340. ' Wasteful and ridiculous excess ' > It is true that in Matid 
the poet wrote : 

And feet like sunny gems on an English green ; 

but can you imagine either ? 

343 ff. Note the imitative sound. — Stony. In what two senses .? 
To what century do you refer this excursion ? 
343-7. See p. xlii. 

346- Broader. Cf. I. 58.— And fell. What time was it at the 
opening of this Canto ? 

347- Lawns. 'Just before sunrise and just after sunset the high- 
est peaks of hills are bathed in rosy light and stand out clear against 
the sky, when the lower spurs and valleys are in comparative dark- 



84 THE PRINCESS. [part hi. 

ness. For this use of the expression "came out" cf. Specimen of a 
Translation of the Iliad in Blank Verse, 13-14 : 

And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
And valley.' 

(Wallace.) 

Were these more, or less, elevated than the site of the college } 



The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story; 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying; 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear. 

And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying ; 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

O love, they die in yon rich sky. 

They faint on hill or field or river ; 
Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 
And grow for ever and for ever. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying ; 
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. 

Dawson says {Study, p. t,o) : ' The theme is a sharp antithesis, arising out 
of a surface analogy between the echoes of a bugle on a mountain lake, and 
the influences of soul upon soul through growing distances of time. In the 
case of the " horns of Elfland" — 

They die on yoa rich sky, 
They faint on hill, or field, or river. 
Fainter comes the echo in proportion to the receding distance. But how 
different with the influences of the soul — 

Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 

And ^row for ever and for ever. 
The stress of meaning is on the word grow. The song is evidently one of 
married love, and the growing echoes reverberate from generation to genera- 
tion, from grandparent to parent and grandchild. Once more it is unity 
through the family. In the first song a unity through the past, in the second 
a unity in the present, and in this a unity for the future.' 

Readers of German may like to see the beautiful translation of the second 
stanza by Strodtmann : 

O horche schnell ! wie laut und hell, 
Nun schwacher, sanfter, ferner klingend ; 
O, siiss und lang von Klipp' und Hang 
Die Homer Elflands, leise singend ! 
Horch ! durch die finstern Schluchten zieht es schallend ; 
Bias, Horn ; antwortet, Echos, hallend, hallend ! 
See pp. xvii, xix. 



86 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 



IV. 

* There sinks the nebulous star we call the sun, 

If that hypothesis of theirs be sound' 

Said Ida ; ' let us down and rest ; ' and we 

Down from the lean and wrinkled precipices, 

By every coppice-feathered chasm and cleft, 5 

Dropt thro' the ambrosial gloom to where below 

No bigger than a glow-worm shone the tent. 

Lamp-lit from the inner. Once she leaned on me, 

Descending ; once or twice she lent her hand, 

And blissful palpitations in the blood, lo 

Stirring a sudden transport, rose and fell. 

But when we planted level feet, and dipped 
Beneath the satin dome and entered in, 
There leaning deep in broidered down we sank 
Our elbows ; on a tripod in the midst 15 

A fragrant flame rose, and before us glowed 
Fruit, blossom, viand, amber wine, and gold. 

2. Hypothesis. Cf. II. 101-3. 

4. Wrinkled precipices. Cf. III. 158, and Will 19-20: 

Sown in a zvrinkle of the monstrous hill, 
The city sparkles like a grain of salt. 

5. Coppice-feathered. ' Lightly fringed with foliage. For this 
use of the verb cf. Enoch Arde?i 67-68 : 

Just where the prone edge of the wood began 
To feather toward the hollow, 

and The Gardener'' s Daughter 46 : 

And all about the large \\xaQ feathers low.' 

(Wallace.) 
lo-ii. Cf. III. 173 ff. 
17. Gold. Cf. Prol. 106. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 87 

Then she, * Let some one sing to us ; lightlier move 
The minutes fledged with music ; ' and a maid, 
Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. 20 

' Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 25 

' Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail 
That brings our friends up from the underworld ; 
Sad as the last which reddens over one 
That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 30 

' Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 35 

18. See p. xlii. 

19. Fledged. Not a very felicitous epithet, if one considers it. — 
Maid. See her name in VI. 298. 

21 ft. ' It is difficult to write without enthusiasm of this exquisitely 
perfect lyric. The rhythm and cadence are so absolutely faultless 
that the absence of rime is not noticed in reading ' (Dawson). 

Kfiowles says {Nineteenth Century XXXIII. 170) : ' He told me that 
" Tears, idle tears " was written as an expression of such longings. 
" It is, in a way, like St. Paul's ' groanings which cannot be uttered.' 
It was written at Tintern, when the woods were all yellowing with 
Autumn seen through the ruined windows. It is what I have always 
felt even from a boy, and what as a boy I called the * passion of 
the past.' And it is so always with me now ; it is the distance that 
charms me in the landscape, the picture and the past, and not the 
immediate to-day in w^hich I move." ' 

For an elaborate and suggestive comment on this song see Luce, 
Handbook, pp. 250-8. 

34. Richard Henry Stoddard pointed out in 188 1 {North Ameri- 
can Review CXXXIII. 97) that this is adapted from Leigh Hunt's 
Hero and Leander (Canto II) : 



88 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

* Dear as remembered kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love, 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret ; 
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.' 40 

She ended with such passion that the tear 
She sang of shook and fell, an erring pearl 
Lost in her bosom ; but with some disdain 
Answered the Princess, ' If indeed there haunt 
About the moldered lodges of the Past 45 

So sweet a voice and vague, fatal to men. 
Well needs it we should cram our ears with wool 
And so pace by ; but thine are fancies hatched 
In silken-folded idleness ; nor is it 

Wiser to weep a true occasion lost, 50 

But trim our sails, and let old bygones be, 
While down the streams that float us each and all 
To the issue, goes, like glittering bergs of ice, 
Throne after throne, and molten on the waste 
Becomes a cloud ; for all things serve their time 55 

Toward that great year of equal mights and rights; 

And when the casement, at the dawn of light, 
Began to show a square of ghastly white. 

36. 'Obviously suggested,' says Collins, 'by Moschus, Idyli III. 
69-70.' This is : ' But Cypris loves thee far more than the kiss 
wherewith she kissed the dying Adonis.' 

46. See p. xlii. 

47. Cram our ears. See the Odyssey, Bk. XII. 
53-55- Note the beautiful simile. 

55. Serve their time. Cf. Morte d' Arthur 241-2 : 

And God fulfils Himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 

56. Great year. Cf. The Golden Year : 

Old writers pushed the happy season back — 

The more fools they — we forward ; dreamers both : 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 89 

Nor would I fight with iron laws, in the end 

Found golden ; let the past be past ; let be 

Their canceled Babels ; tho' the rough kex break 

The starred mosaic, and the beard-blown goat 60 

Hang on the shaft, and the wild figtree split 

Their monstrous idols, care not while we hear 

A trumpet in the distance pealing news 

Of better, and Hope, a poising eagle, burns 

But well I know 
That unto him who works, and feels he works, 
This same grand year is ever at the doors. 
— Equal. Cf. I. 130; VII. 283 £f. 

59. Canceled Babels. Cf. Gen. 11. 1-9. — Kex. Hemlock. 

60. Mosaic. Inlaid pavement. — Beard-blown goat. See 
Tennyson's remark on p. xi. 

61. Wild fig-tree. Dawson says: 'The rending power of the 
wild fig-tree — Caprijiciis — w^as a trite theme of Roman poets. 
Martial (X. 2) thinks his fame will last through his writings, while 
the wild fig splits the monument of Messala : 

Marmora Messalae findit caprificus. 
In Horace {Ep. V. 17) Canidia makes use of fig-trees plucked from 

tombs : 

Jubet sepulcris caprificos erutas. 

Juvenal (X. 147), speaking of the vanity of ambition, says: 
Vain rage — the roots of the wild fig-tree rise, 
Strike through the marble, and their memory dies. 
Ramage, in his Nooks and By-ways of Italy (p. 69), is reminded of 
this passage by noticing a wild fig springing out of and splitting a 
rock in the Apennines.' 

64. Burns. Lowell has thus expressed the same poetic idea 
{Above and Below) : 

Lone watcher on the mountain-height ! 

It is right precious to behold 
The first long surf of climbing light 

Flood all the thirsty East with gold ; 
But we, who in the shadow sit. 

Know also when the day is nigh, 
Seeing thy shining forehead lit 
With his inspiring prophecy. 



90 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

Above the unrisen morrow ; ' then to me, 65 

' Know you no song of your own land,' she said, 

'• Not such as moans about the retrospect. 

But deals with the other distance, and the hues 

Of promise ; not a death's-head at the wine ? ' 

Then I remembered one myself had made, 70 

What time I watched the swallow winging south 
From mine own land, part made long since, and part 
Now while I sang ; and maidenlike as far 
As I could ape their treble, did I sing. 

' O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South, 75 

Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves, 
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee. 

But Schiller had already said, in one of his letters (No. 9, ed. 
Hempel) : ' Before truth sends its triumphant light into the depths 
of the heart, poesy catches the rays, and the summits of humanity 
shine with brightness while a damp night is still resting upon the 
valleys.' 

66. Know you ? We do ; who wrote it ? 

Let the dead past bury its dead ; 
Act, act in the living present, 
Heart within and God o'erhead. 

6g. Death's-head. Cf. Herodotus I. 78: 'At their convivial 
banquets, among the wealthy classes [of the Egyptians], when they 
have finished supper, a man carries round in a coffin the image of a 
dead body carved in wood, made as like as possible in color and 
workmanship, and in size generally about one or two cubits in length ; 
and showing this to each of the company, he says, " Look upon this, 
then drink and enjoy yourself ; for when dead you will be like this." ' 

71. What time. From Milton? See my note in Paradise Lost, 
Books I and II (on I. 36). — Swallow. Cf. IIL 194. 

75 ff. Stedman remarks (p. 220): 'The Swallow Song ... is 
modeled upon the isometric songs in the third and eleventh idyls of 
Theocritus, bearing a special likeness to the lover's serenade in 
Idyl IIL, as divided by Ahrens and others into stanzas of three 
verses each.' 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 91 

* O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each, 
That bright and fierce and fickle is the South, 

And dark and true and tender is the North. 80 

' O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light 
Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill. 
And cheep and twitter twenty million loves. 

' O were I thou that she might take me in. 
And lay me on her bosom, and her heart 85 

Would rock the snowy cradle till I died. 

* Why lingereth she to clothe her heart with love, 
Delaying as the tender ash delays 

To clothe herself, when all the woods are green } 

' O tell her. Swallow, that thy brood is flown ; 90 

Say to her, I do but wanton in the South, 
But in the North long since my nest is made. 

' O tell her, brief is life but love is long, 
And brief the sun of summer in the North, 
And brief the moon of beauty in the South. 95 

' O Swallow, flying from the golden woods, 
Fly to her, and pipe and woo her, and make her mine. 
And tell her, tell her, that I follow thee.' 

81. Bristed says of the versification {Amer. Rev. VIII. 37): 
* Much of the versification is on the Italian model. Now this may be 
a perfectly proper innovation. It is possible that 

O Swallow, Swallow if I could follow and light 

is as natural and suitable a line in the one language as 

Molto eglPopro con senno e con la mano 

is in the other.' 

84-86. Dawson compares Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis 1 185-6 : 

Lo ! in this hollow cradle take thy rest ; 

My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night. 

97. Scan. 



92 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

I ceased, and all the ladies, each at each, 
Like the Ithacensian suitors in old time, loo 

Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips. 
And knew not what they meant ; for still my voice 
Rang false ; but smiling, ' Not for thee,' she said, 
' O Bulbul, any rose of Gulistan 

Shall burst her veil; marsh-divers, rather, maid, 105 

Shall croak thee sister, or the meadow-crake 
Grate her harsh kindred in the grass ; and this 
A mere love-poem ! O for such, my friend. 
We hold them slight ; they mind us of the time 
When we made bricks in Egypt. Knaves are men, no 

That lute and flute fantastic tenderness, 
And dress the victim to the offering up. 
And paint the gates of Hell with Paradise, 

loi. Laughed with alien lips. 'The reference is to the Odyssey, 
XX. 347. The suitors at the court of Penelope feel the occult 
influence of the unseen goddess, Pallas, causing their thoughts to 
wander. They fail to recognize Ulysses in his disguise, and their 
laughter is constrained and unnatural, they know not why. They 
laugh ivith alien lips, which is the nearest possible poetical 
translation of the Greek idiomatic expression, " They laughed 
with other men's jaws " [ot 5' ^St; 'yvadfxotcn yeKoiwv dWorpioicrLv] ' 
(Dawson). 

104. 'The nightingale is the Bulhd in Persia, and Persian poets 
feign that he is the constant lover of the rose, to whom he pours 
out his passionate melodies. Gulistan is Persian for rose-garden ' 
(Dawson). 

106. Meadow-crake. ' The corn-crake or land-rail. Says Wood : 
" The cry of the corn-crake may be exactly imitated by drawing a 
quill or a piece of stick over the large teeth of a comb, or by rubbing 
together two jagged strips of bone " ' (Dawson). 

107. Grate her harsh kindred. Apparently to be construed on 
the analogy of croak thee sister ; almost as though grate were a 
disagreeable substitute for greet. The construction is violent, and 
almost repugnant to the genius of the language. 

no. Bricks in Egypt. Cf. Exod. i. 8-14. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 93 

And play the slave to gain the tyranny. 

Poor soul ! I had a maid of honor once ; 115 

She wept her true eyes blind for such a one, 

A rogue of canzonets and serenades. 

I loved her. Peace be with her. She is dead. 

So they blaspheme the muse ! But great is song 

Used to great ends; ourself have often tried 120 

Valkyrian hymns, or into rhythm have dashed 

The passion of the prophetess ; for song 

Is duer unto freedom, force, and growth 

Of spirit, than to junketing and love. 

Love is it? Would this same mock-love, and this 125 

Mock-Hymen were laid up like winter bats. 

Till all men grew to rate us at our worth, 

Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes 

To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered 

Whole in ourselves, and owed to none. Enough ! 130 

But now, to leaven play with profit, you. 

Know you no song, the true growth of your soil. 

That gives the manners of your countrywomen ? ' 

114. From Horace {Sat. II. iii. 72) and Tacitus {Hist. I. ch. 36), as 
Collins notes. 

117. Canzonets. The word occurs in Lovers Labor'' s Lost IV. ii. 1 24. 

121. Valkyrian. Martial. ' Such as were sung by the Valkyrs, 
or Valkyrias, " the choosers of the slain," or fatal sisters of Odin, 
in the Northern mythology. They were represented as awful and - 
beautiful maidens, who, mounted on swift horses and bearing drawn 
swords, presided over the field of battle, selecting those destined to 
death, and conducting them to Valhalla, where they ministered at 
the feasts of the heroes ' (Rolfe). Cf. VI. 17-42. 

122. Cf. Miriam's song, Exod. 15. 20. 
128-130. See p. xlii. 

129. Living wills. Cf. I. 47; II. 185; V. 340; VI. 102; VII. 
287. Also Will I ; In Memoriam CXXXI : 

O living will that shalt endure. 

130. Owed. Responsible. 



94 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

She spoke and turned her sumptuous head, with 
eyes 
Of shining expectation fixed on mine. 135 

Then while I dragged my brains for such a song, 
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouthed glass had wrought. 
Or mastered by the sense of sport, began 
To troll a careless, careless tavern-catch 
Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences 140 

Unmeet for ladies. Florian nodded at him, 
I frowning ; Psyche flushed and wanned and shook ; 
The lilylike Melissa drooped her brows ; 
* Forbear,' the Princess cried ; ' Forbear, Sir ' I ; 
And heated thro' and thro' with wrath and love, 145 

I smote him on the breast ; he started up ; 
There rose a shriek as of a city sacked ; 
Melissa clamored, ' Flee the death ; ' ' To horse ' 
Said Ida ; ' home ! to horse ! ' and fled, as flies 
A troop of snowy doves athwart the dusk, 150 

When some one batters at the dovecote-doors. 
Disorderly the women. Alone I stood 
With Florian, cursing Cyril, vexed at heart. 
In the pavilion ; there like parting hopes 
I heard them passing from me ; hoof by hoof, 155 

And every hoof a knell to my desires. 
Clanged on the bridge ; and then another shriek, 
' The Head, the Head, the Princess, O the Head ! ' 

134. Sumptuous. A felicitous epithet. 

140. Moll and Meg. Probably Tennyson has in mind Tempest 
II. ii. 48-56. 

143. Lilylike. Cf. III. 52. 

146. Is this the dramatic crisis t 

148. To horse. Is this the command one would expect? 

150. Doves. Cf. II. 87. 

152. Disorderly. Adjective or adverb.? 

157. See p. xlii. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 95 

For blind with rage she missed the plank, and rolled 

In the river. Out I sprang from glow to gloom ; i6o 

There whirled her white robe like a blossomed branch 

Rapt to the horrible fall ; a glance I gave, 

No more ; but woman-vested as I was 

Plunged ; and the flood drew ; yet I caught her ; then 

Oaring one arm, and bearing in my left 165 

The weight of all the hopes of half the world, 

Strove to buffet to land in vain. A tree 

Was half-disrooted from his place, and stooped 

To drench his dark locks in the gurgling wave 

Mid-channel. Right on this we drove and caught, 170 

And grasping down the boughs I gained the shore. 

There stood her maidens glimmeringly grouped 
In the hollow bank. One reaching forward drew 
My burthen from mine arms ; they cried ' She lives : ' 
They bore her back into the tent; but I, 175 

So much a kind of shame within me wrought, 
Not yet endured to meet her opening eyes. 
Nor found my friends ; but pushed alone on foot 

159. Blind with rage. Is this in keeping with the character of 
the woman and the time ? 
160-7. See p. xHi. 
164, Plunged, a. Jul. Cess. I. ii. 105. 

166. 'Mark the exquisite irony of this line. As though his 
struggle in the water was rendered the harder by the fact that 
on the lady rested the fate of this great movement ! This is 
the true touch of ironical banter. There is a similar passage in 
the Roman poet Statius, where the baby Apollo is represented as 
depressing by his divine weight the edge of the island of Delos as 
he crawls along it. Cf. 531-2' (Wallace). 

Statius has been severely criticized for this conceit. 

167. Strove . . . vain. Hadley says of the rhythm of this line 
that it ' is admirably adapted to express laborious and unsuccessful 
effort.' He also praises 164. 

i6g. Is this possibly a reminiscence oi Hamlet IN. vii. 166.? 



96 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

(For since her horse was lost I left her mine) 

Across the woods, and less from Indian craft i8o 

Than beelike instinct hiveward, found at length 

The garden portals. Two great statues, Art 

And Science, Caryatids, lifted up 

A weight of emblem, and betwixt were valves 

Of open-work in which the hunter rued 185 

His rash intrusion, manlike, but his brows 

Had sprouted, and the branches thereupon 

Spread out at top, and grimly spiked the gates. 

A little space was left between the horns, 
Thro' which I clambered o'er at top with pain, 190 

Dropped on the sward, and up the linden walks. 
And, tossed on thoughts that changed from hue to hue, 
Now poring on the glowworm, now the star, 
I paced the terrace, till the Bear had wheeled 
Thro' a great arc his seven slow suns. 

181. Hiveward. Cf. II. 84. 

183. Caryatids. Columns in the form of sculptured female 
figures, generally with full draperies, iised to support an entablature, 
or the like. 

184. Valves. The Latin word for double or folding doors 
(Horace, Juvenal, Ovid, etc.); here=^^/^j-. 

185. ' The allusion is to the hunter Actaeon, who, having come 
upon Diana and her nymphs when bathing, was turned into a stag ' 
(Dawson). 

191. See p. xliii. — Linden walks. Cf. I. 206. 

193. Had he nothing more important to think about ? 

194. The Bear. Considering Tennyson's visualizing power, the 
following statement by Knowles {Nineteenth Century XXXIII. 165) 
is surprising: 'The shortness of his sight, which was extreme, tor- 
mented him always. When he was looking at any object he seemed 
to be smelling it. He said that he had " never seen the two pointers 
of the Great Bear except as two intersecting circles, like the first prop- 
osition in Euclid." ' Tennyson was greatly interested in astronomy. 

195. Notice the slow monosyllables. Why suns? 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 97 

A step 195 

Of lightest echo, then a loftier form 
Than female, moving thro' the uncertain gloom, 
Distmbed me with the doubt ' If this were she ? ' 
But it was Florian. ' Hist, O hist,' he said, 
' They seek us ; out so late is out of rules. 200 

Moreover, " Seize the strangers " is the cry. 
How came you here ? ' I told him : * I,' said he, 
' Last of the train, a moral leper, I, 
To whom none spake, half-sick at heart, returned. 
Arriving all confused among the rest, 205 

With hooded brows I crept into the hall, 
And, couched behind a Judith, underneath 
The head of Holofernes peeped and saw. 
Girl after girl was called to trial ; each 

Disclaimed all knowledge of us ; last of all, 210 

Melissa ; trust me. Sir, I pitied her. 
She, questioned if she knew us men, at first 
Was silent ; closer pressed, denied it not ; 
And then, demanded if her mother knew, 
Or Psyche, she affirmed not, or denied ; 215 

From whence the Royal mind, familiar with her, 
Easily gathered either guilt. She sent 
For Psyche, but she was not there ; she called 
For Psyche's child to cast it from the doors ; 
She sent for Blanche to accuse her face to face ; 220 

And I slipped out ; but whither will you now ? 

203. Moral leper. Explain. 

206. Hooded brows. Cf. II. 337. 

207. Judith. See the Apocryphal book of Judith. Aldrich has a 
poem on the subject, and the Old English fragment is one of the 
best specimens of our earlier poetry. 

212. Us men. Us to be men. 

219-220. Is this an admirable heroine 1 Cf. 159, and see Kings- 
ley's remarks on p. xxvi. 



98 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

And where are Psyche, Cyril ? both are fled ; 

What if together ? That were not so well. 

Would rather we had never come ! I dread 

His wildness, and the chances of the dark.' 225 

'And yet,' I said, 'you wrong him more than I 
That struck him ; this is proper to the clown — 
Tho' smocked, or furred and purpled, still the clown — 
To harm the thing that trusts him, and to shame 
That which he says he loves ; for Cyril, howe'er 230 

He deal in frolic, as to-night — the song 
Might have been worse, and sinned in grosser lips 
Beyond all pardon — as it is, I hold 
These flashes on the surface are not he. 
He has a solid base of temperament; 235 

But as the water-lily starts and slides 
Upon the level in little puffs of wind, 
Tho' anchored to the bottom, such is he.' 

Scarce had I ceased when from a tamarisk near 
Two proctors leapt upon us, crying, ' Names ; ' 240 

227. Clown. Boor, churl. 

235. Temperament. Natural disposition or constitution ; per- 
sonal characteristics. 

236-8. Collins says {Illustrations, p. 84): 'This felicitous and 
picturesque simile is one of Tennyson's many debts to Wordsworth 

{Excursion, Bk. V.) : 

A thing 
Subject ... to vital accidents ; 
And, Uke the water-Uly, Uves and thrives, 
Whose root is fixed in stable earth, whose head 
Floats on the tossing waters.' 

His discovery was first published in Cornhilliox July, 1880. Tenny- 
son repudiated the insinuation ; see p. xxxviii. Dawson had re- 
marked : ' Wordsworth's is the truer picture.' 

239-251. Luce (p. 45), after referring to the verbal quibbles in 
I. 144-5, V. 275, adds: * From these low beginnings of wit we may 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 99 

He, Standing still, was clutched ; but I began 

To thrid the musky-circled mazes, wind 

And double in and out the boles, and race 

By all the fountains ; fleet I was of foot ; 

Before me showered the rose in flakes ; behind 245 

I heard the puffed pursuer ; at mine ear 

Bubbled the nightingale and heeded not, 

And secret laughter tickled all my soul. 

At last I hooked my ankle in a vine 

That clasped the feet of a Mnemosyne, 250 

And falling on my face was caught and known. 

They haled us to the Princess, where she sat 
High in the hall ; above her drooped a lamp. 
And made the single jewel on her brow 
Burn like the mystic fire on a mast-head, 255 

Prophet of storm. A handmaid on each side 

pass to such delicate humor as the following.' To this he would 
add 189-190, 206-8. 

242. Thrid. Thread ; to pass through something narrow or tor- 
tuous. Cf . A Dream of Fair Women 243 : 

Thridding the sombre boscage of the wood. 

— Musky-circled mazes. 'Garden-walks with fragrant borders* 
(Wallace). 

243. Boles. Define. 

244. Fountains. Cf. I. 215. 

245. Rose. Cf. I. 216; III. 106. 
246-8. See p. xliii. 

250. Mnemosyne. Goddess of memory, and mother of the Muses. 
In what part of the College were the statues of the Muses.? 

252. Haled. Cf. Luke 12. 58 ; Acts 8. 3. 

254-6. See p. xliii. 

255- Mystic fire. ' When the atmosphere is in a state of electri- 
cal tension, brush-shaped or starlike flames are seen on the masts of 
ships. . . . Mariners call them St. Elmo's fires ' (Dawson). Rolfe 
quotes Longfellow, The Golde7i Legejtd : 



100 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

Bowed toward her, combing out her long black hair 

Damp from the river ; and close behind her stood 

Eight daughters of the plow, stronger than men, 

Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain, 260 

And labor. Each was like a Druid rock ; 

Or like a spire of land that stands apart 

Cleft from the main, and wailed about with mews. 

Then, as we came, the crowd dividing clove 
An advent to the throne ; and therebeside, 265 

Half-naked as if caught at once from bed 
And tumbled on the purple footcloth, lay 
The lily-shining child ; and on the left. 
Bowed on her palms and folded up from wrong. 
Her round white shoulder shaken with her sobs, 270 

Melissa knelt ; but Lady Blanche erect 
Stood up and spake, an affluent orator. 

Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, 

With their gHmmering lanterns, all at play 

On the tops of the masts and the tips of the spars, 

And I knew we should have foul weather to-day. 

Cf. Tiresias 110-112. 

259. Daughters of the plow. Cf. Aylmer's Field 723 : * Sons 
of the glebe.' Such phraseology is Biblical. 

See p. xliii. 

260. Blowzed. Reddened, made coarse of complexion. 
261-3. 'The image is grand, — just a little too grand for a group 

of female servants, summoned to eject the three masculine intruders 
from the university ' (Van Dyke, The Poetry of Tennyson, p. 116). 

261. Druid rock. Like the pillars of Stonehenge. See note on 
Con. 41 ff. 

268. Lily-shining. Cf. VI. 176. 

270. Round white shoulder. How complete a picture have you 
of Melissa? Cf. H. 302-6; IIL 79-84; IV. 143. 

272. Affluent. Fluent, eloquent ; at once rich in matter and 
easy in expression. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 101 

' It was not thus, O Princess, in old days ; 
You prized my counsel, lived upon my lips ; 
I led you then to all the Castalies ; 275 

I fed 5^ou with the milk of every Muse ; 
I loved you like this kneeler, and you me 
Your second mother ; those were gracious times. 
Then came your new friend; you began to change — 
I saw it and grieved — to slacken and to cool ; 280 

Till taken with her seeming openness 
You turned your warmer currents all to her ; 
To me you froze ; this was my meed for all. 
Yet I bore up, in part from ancient love. 
And partly that I hoped to win you back, 285 

And partly conscious of my own deserts, 
And partly that you were my civil head, 
And chiefly you were born for something great, 
In which I might your fellow-worker be. 
When time should serve; and thus a noble scheme 290 

Grew up from seed we two long since had sown ; 
In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd. 
Up in one night and due to sudden sun. 
We took this palace ; but even from the first 
You stood in your own light and darkened mine. 295 

What student came but that you planed her path 
To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, 

275. Castalies. ' Sources of inspiration or culture ; a pluralizing 
of Castalia, or Castaly, the mythical spring on Parnassus, sacred to 
the Muses ' (Rolfe). 

280. Cf. /tcl. Cces. IV. ii. 1 5 ff. 

282. Turned . . . currents. Cf. Hamlet III. i. 87. 

283. To me you froze. How better than you froze to me, the 
reading of the early editions ? 

284-8. Cf. Prol. 44-47 ; II. 56-58. 

292. Jonah's gourd. See Jonah 4. 5-1 1. 

296. You. But cf. I. 231. Was it the Princess who thus replied ? 



102 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, 

I your old friend and tried, she new in all ? 

But still her lists were swelled and mine were lean ; 300 

Yet I bore up in hope she would be known. 

Then came these wolves ; they knew her ; they endured. 

Long-closeted with her the yestermorn. 

To tell her what they were, and she to hear ; 

And me none told ; not less to an eye like mine, 3^5 

A lidless watcher of the public weal, 

Last night their mask was patent, and my foot 

Was to you ; but I thought again ; I feared 

To meet a cold " We thank you, we shall hear of it 

From Lady Psyche ; " you had gone to her, 310 

She told, perforce ; and winning easy grace, 

No doubt, for slight delay, remained among us 

In our young nursery still unknown, the stem 

Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat 

Were all miscounted as malignant haste 315 

To push my rival out of place and power. 

But public use required she should be known ; 

And since my oath was ta'en for public use, 

I broke the letter of it to keep the sense. 

298. Foreigner. Cf. II. 243 ff. 

305. Eye. Cf. III. 30. 115; VI. 310. 

306. Lidless. Cf. Lowell Rosaline, st. 2 : 

But still the spirit sees and hears, — 
Its eyes are lidless, Rosaline. 

311. She told. She had told, would have told. 

313. Nursery. Meaning.? 

314. Grain. Cf. V. 517; VI. 34. — Touchwood. Cf. Aylmer's 

Field 510-512 : 

Once grove-like, each huge arm a tree, but now 
The broken base of a black tower, a cave 
Of touchwood, with a single flourishing spray. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 103 

I spoke not then at first, but watched them well, 320 

Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done ; 

And yet this day (tho' you should hate me for it) 

I came to tell you ; found that you had gone. 

Ridden to the hills, she likewise ; now, I thought, 

That surely she will speak ; if not, then I ; 3^5 

Did she ? These monsters blazoned what they were, 

According to the coarseness of their kind, 

For thus I hear ; and known at last (my work) 

And full of cowardice and guilty shame — 

I grant in her some sense of shame — she flies ; 33° 

And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, 

I, that have lent my life to build up yours, 

I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time, 

And talent, I — you know it — I will not boast ; 

Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan, 335 

Divorced from my experience, will be chaff 

For every gust of chance, and men will say 

We did not know the real light, but chased 

The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.' 

She ceased ; the Princess answered coldly, ' Good ; 34o 
Your oath is broken ; we dismiss you ; go. 
For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child). 
Our mind is changed ; we take it to ourself.' 

339. Cf. III. 140-150. Was Blanche's speech honest ? Was it 
skilfully devised ? 

340-3. Boynton comments : ' The Princess is admirable in her 
summary dismissal of Lady Blanche. She shows perfect self-com- 
mand, and a really royal dignity of decision. But as for her adop- 
tion of the child — what shall we say was her principal motive : a 
mere feeling of compassion for the deserted baby, a natural longing 
for child-companionship, or a settled purpose to establish by her 
complaisance a permanent right to Psyche's little daughter, and so 
to attain her subtlest revenge upon Psyche herself .'' ' 



104 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

Thereat the Lady stretched a vulture throat, 
And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile. 345 

' The plan was mine. I built the nest ' she said 
' To hatch the cuckoo. Rise ! ' and stooped to updrag 
Melissa ; she, half on her mother propped. 
Half-drooping from her, turned her face, and cast 
A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, 35° 

Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, 
A Niobean daughter, one arm out, 
Appealing to the bolts of Heaven ; and while 
We gazed upon her came a little stir 

About the doors, and on a sudden rushed 355 

Among us, out of breath, as one pursued, 
A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear 
Stared in her eyes, and chalked her face, and winged 
Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell 
Delivering sealed dispatches, which the Head 360. 

Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood 
Tore open, silent we with blind surmise 
Regarding while she read, till over brow 
And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom 
As of some fire against a stormy cloud, 365 

When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick 

344-5. Luce says (p. 226) : ' Of gesture-painting the examples are 
admirable and abundant,' and adduces this. 

345. Haggard. When a noun, this word signifies 'hawk'; can 
it have been suggested by the vulture of the preceding line ? 

347. Cuckoo. Explain. 

348 ff. Observe how Tennyson chisels a statue. 

352. Niobean daughter. One of a famous group of statues at 
Florence, of which photographs can be readily seen. What is the 
legend of Niobe ? 

357. Woman-post. Cf. I. 188. 

366. Rick. About 1830 rick-burning was rife, laborers having in 
this manner taken vengeance upon their employers for real or imag- 
inary grievances. Cf. To Mary Boyle : 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 105 

Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens ; 

For anger most it seemed, while now her breast, 

Beaten with some great passion at her heart, 

Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard 37° 

In the dead hush the papers that she held 

Rustle ; at once the lost lamb at her feet 

Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam ; 

The plaintive cry jarred on her ire ; she crushed 

The scrolls together, made a sudden turn 375 

As if to speak, but, utterance failing her, 

She whirled them on to me, as who should say 

' Read,' and I read — two letters — one her sire's. 

< Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way 
We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, 3^0 

We, conscious of what temper you are built, 
Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell 
Into his father's hands, who has this night, 
You lying close upon his territory. 

Slipped round and in the dark invested you ; 3^5 

And here he keeps me hostage for his son.' 

The second was my father's, running thus : 
' You have our son ; touch not a hair of his head ; 

And once — I well remember that red night 
When thirty ricks, 

All flaming, made an English homestead Hell — 

These hands of mine 
Have helped to pass a bucket from the well 

Along the Une. 

This was at Somersby, Lincolnshire. 
367. See p. xliii. 
370-2. See p. xliii. 
372. See 342, 

377. As who. Who is an indefinite pronoun. 
380. Which learnt. Absolute construction. 



106 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

Render him up unscathed ; give him your hand; 

Cleave to your contract ; tho' indeed we hear 390 

You hold the woman is the better man — 

A rampant heresy, such as if it spread 

Would make all women kick against their lords 

Thro' all the world, and which might well deserve 

That we this night should pluck your palace down ; 395 

And we will do it, unless you send us back 

Our son, on the instant, whole.' 

So far I read; 
And then stood up and spoke impetuously. 

' O not to pry and peer on your reserve, 
But led by golden wishes, and a hope 400 

The child of regal compact, did I break 
Your precinct ; not a scorner of your sex 
But venerator, zealous it should be 
All that it might be ; hear me, for I bear, 
Tho' man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs, 405 

From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life 
Less mine than yours ; my nurse would tell me of you ; 
I babbled for you, as babies for the moon, 
Vague brightness ; when a boy, you stooped to me 
From all high places, lived in all fair lights, 410 

Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south 
And blown to inmost north ; at eve and dawn 
With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods ; 
The leader wildswan in among the stars 
Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light 415 

393. Kick against. Be recalcitrant towards. Cf. Acts 9. 5. 
395. Pluck . . . down. So in Shakespeare. 
401. Regal. The first edition had legal. Is this better .? 
406. Flaxen curl. Of what complexion was he ? 
415. Clang. Cf. III. 90, and The Dying S%van. — Glowworm. 
Phosphorescent. 



PART IV.] A MEDLE V. 107 

The mellow breaker murmured Ida. Now, 

Because I would have reached you, had you been 

Sphered up with Cassiopeia, or the enthroned 

Persephone in Hades, now at length, 

Those winters of abeyance all worn out, 420 

A man I came to see you ; but, indeed. 

Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, 

O noble Ida, to those thoughts that wait 

On you, their centre ; let me say but this. 

That many a famous man and woman, town 425 

And landskip, have I heard of, after seen 

The dwarfs of presage ; tho' when known, there grew 

Another kind of beauty in detail 

Made them worth knowing ; but in you I found 

My boyish dream involved and dazzled down 430 

And mastered, while that after-beauty makes 

Such head from act to act, from hour to hour. 

Within me, that except you slay me here. 

According to your bitter statute-book, 

418-9. 'Cassiopeia was a mythical Queen of Ethiopia, and her 
name is now given to a constellation near the North Pole Star. 
With the splendid word sphered (='set as a star' — the expression 
occurs also in Shakespeare, Troihis and Cressida I. iii. 90 — of the 
Sun) we may compare ' starr'd ' in the following passage from Mil- 
ton's // Penseroso 19-21, referring to the same legend : 

That starr'd Ethiop queen that strove 

To set her beauty's praise above 

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended. 

Cf. a parallel use of 'bulked' in V. 142. Persephone was the wife 
of Hades, King of the Lower World, which is itself known by his 
name' (Wallace). Cf. Jean Ingelow's Persephojie. 

420. Explain. 

422. Frequence. Throng. So in Milton. 

426. Landskip. For the unusual spelling cf. p. xxxviii. Else- 
where he has landscape. 

427. Dwarfs of presage. Explain. Cf. I. 72. 



108 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

I cannot cease to follow you, as they say 435 

The seal does music ; who desire you more 

Than growing boys their manhood ; dying lips, 

With many thousand matters left to do, 

The breath of life ; O more than poor men wealth, 

Than sick men health — yours, yours, not mine — but half 44© 

Without you ; with you, whole ; and of those halves 

You worthiest ; and howe'er you block and bar 

Your heart with system out from mine, I hold 

That it becomes no man to nurse despair, 

But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms 445 

To follow up the worthiest till he die ; 

Yet that I came not all unauthorized. 

Behold your father's letter.' 

On one knee 
Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dashed 
Unopened at her feet ; a tide of fierce 450 

Invective seemed to wait behind her lips. 
As waits a river level with the dam. 
Ready to burst and flood the world with foam ; 
And so she would have spoken, but there rose 
A hubbub in the court of half the maids 455 

Gathered together ; from the illumined hall 
Long lanes of splendor slanted o'er a press 
Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, 

436. The seal does music. A fact. 

437. Dying lips. A sort of echo of 33. 

440. Yours. Elliptical ; perhaps we may supply ' I am.' 
443. System. See VI. 178. 
451. Invective. More rage! 

456. Illumined. What time of night was this? Cf. 195,200, 
383, 543. How fond they are of turning night into day ! Cf. I. 204. 

457. Long lanes of splendor. Cf. II. 449. — Slanted. What are the 
relative positions of the hall and the court ? Cf. II. 10, 17 ; IV. 533. 

458. Snowy shoulders. Were they all in evening dress ? Cf. 
43, 270, 364. — Herded ewes. Cf. VI. 69 ff. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 109 

And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, 

And gold and golden heads ; they to and fro 460 

Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, 

All open-mouthed, all gazing to the light. 

Some crying there was an army in the land, 

And some that men were in the very walls, 

And some they cared not ; till a clamor grew 465 

As of a new-world Babel, woman-built. 

And worse-confounded ; high above them stood 

The placid marble Muses, looking peace. 

Not peace she looked, the Head; but rising up 
Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so 47° 

To the open window moved, remaining there 

459. Rainbow robes. Of what two colors ? 

460. Golden heads. Cf. Prol. 142. 

461. Wallace says : ' This tumultuous disorder is a fine rhetorical 
effect, expressing and emphasizing the wild panic of the girls. For 
similar cases of sympathy between sound and sense cf. II. 168-170 ; 
IV. 162-7, 195, 370; VI. 69; VII. 210, 230.' 

See p. xliii. 

466. Babel. Cf. 59. 

467. Worse-confounded. From Milton, Paradise Lost. — High 
above them. Had you thought of these Muses as high ? Cf. II. 

13-14- 

468. A fine line. 

469-476. Cf. Saintsbury, Corrected Impressions, pp. 35-36 : ' But 
Tennyson has another secret than this for blank verse. This is the 
secret of the paragraph, which he alone of all English poets shares 
with Milton in perfection. There is litde doubt that he learnt it 
from Milton, but the effect is quite different, though the means re- 
sorted to are necessarily much the same in both cases, and include 
in both a very careful and deliberate disposition of the full stop, which 
breaks and varies the cadence of the line ; the adoption, when it is 
thought necessary, of trisyllabic instead of disyllabic feet ; and the 
arrangement of a whole block of verses so that they lead up to a 
climax of sense and sound in the final line.' 

470. Cf. 257, and I. 38. 



110 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

Fixed like a beacon-tower above the waves 

Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye 

Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light 

Dash themselves dead. She stretched her arms and called 475 

Across the tumult, and the tumult fell. 

* What fear ye, brawlers ? am not I your Head ? 
On me, me, me, the storm first breaks ; / dare 
All these male thunderbolts ; what is it ye fear ? 
Peace ! there are those to avenge us, and they come ; 480 
If not, — myself were like enough, O girls, 
To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, 
And clad in iron burst the ranks of war. 
Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause, 

472 ff. ' The same simile occurs in Etioch Arden : 

Allured him as the beacon-blaze allures 
The bird of passage, till he madly strikes 
Against it, and beats out his weary life. 

The description in the first passage is far more vivid. The lofty 
tower, the tempest, and the red revolving light intensify the picture. 
A parallel passage occurs in Longfellow, The Light-house : 

The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din 

Of wings and winds and solitary cries, 
Blinded and maddened by the light within, 

Dashes himself against the glare and dies.' 

(Dawson.) 

473. Crimson-rolling. Should not this be crimson, rolling? 
What does crimson-rolling mean ? 

474. Noel says {Poetry and Poets, p. 233) : * The fine comparison 
of the Princess Ida ... to a beacon glaring ruin over raging seas 

. . . seems too grand for the occasion.' 

475. See p. xliii. 

475-6. She . . . fell. Admirable. Cf. Virgil, yS«. I. 148-154. 
479. Thunderbolts. Cf. II. 205. 

482. Maiden. What two senses ? 

483. Cf. Prol. 40 ff. 

484. Protomartyr. Who was the Biblical protomartyr.? 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. HI 

Die ; yet I blame you not so much for fear ; 485 

Six thousand years of fear have made you that 

From which I would redeem you ; but for those 

That stir this hubbub — you and you — I know 

Your faces there in the crowd — to-morrow morn 

We hold a great convention ; then shall they 490 

That love their voices more than duty, learn 

With whom they deal, dismissed in shame to live 

No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, 

Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame. 

Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, 495 

The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, 

Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels. 

But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum. 

To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour. 

For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.' 500 

She, ending, waved her hands ; thereat the crowd 
Muttering, dissolved ; then with a smile that looked 
A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff. 
When all the glens are drowned in azure gloom 
Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said : 505 

* You have done well, and like a gentleman, 
And like a prince ; you have our thanks for all ; 

485. See p. xliv. 

486. Have made you that. Cf. II. 109 ff., 136-7. 

494. Mincers of each other's fame. Like Lady Blanche > Cf. 
II. 78, and note on VI. 321. 

497. * This very vigorous expression is from Longinus, or from 
the author of the De Haloneso, from whom Longinus apparently 
quotes it : " Unless you carry your brains next to the ground in your 
heels " ' (Collins). 

498. Thrum. Strum. 

499- Scream. Cf. V. 422 ff. 

502. See p. xliv. 

505. Floated. Cf. VI. -]!,. 



112 THE PRINCESS: [part iv. 

And you look well too in your woman's dress ; 

Well have you done, and like a gentleman. 

You saved our life ; we owe you bitter thanks ; 510 

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood — 

Then men had said — but now — What hinders me 

To take such bloody vengeance on you both ? — 

Yet since our father — Wasps in our good hive, 

You would-be quenchers of the light to be, 5^5 

Barbarians, grosser than your native bears — 

would I had his sceptre for one hour ! 

You that have dared to break our bound, and gulled 

Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us — 

/wed with thee ! /bound by precontract 520 

Your bride, your bondslave ! not tho' all the gold 

That veins the world were packed to make your crown. 

And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, 

Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us ; 

1 trample on your offers and on you ; 525 
Begone ; we will not look upon you more. 

Here, push them out at gates.' 

In wrath she spake. 
Then those eight mighty daughters of the plow 
Bent their broad faces toward us, and addressed 
Their motion ; twice I sought to plead my cause, 53° 

But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands. 
The weight of destiny ; so from her face 
They pushed us, down the steps, and thro' the court. 
And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates. 

We crossed the street, and gained a petty mound 535 

Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard 

514. Hive. Cf. II. 84. 

519. Servants. Cf. I. i78ff. 

523. Lord you. Call you ' Lord.' 

529. Addressed. Directed. 



PART IV.] A MEDLEY. 113 

The voices murmuring. While I listened, came 

On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt ; 

I seemed to move among a world of ghosts ; 

The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, 540 

The jest and earnest working side by side, 

The cataract and the tumult and the kings 

Were shadows ; and the long fantastic night 

With all its doings had and had not been, 

And all things were and were not. 

This went by 545 

As strangely as it came, and on my spirits 
Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy ; 
Not long ; I shook it off ; for spite of doubts 
And sudden ghostly shadowings, I was one 
To whom the touch of all mischance but came 550 

As night to him that sitting on a hill 
Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun 
Set into sunrise ; then we moved away. 

537. Came. To what artistic end ? 

538. See p. xliv. 

541. The jest is about to end ; the earnest to begin. In fact, the 
comic has fairly shaded into the tragic already. 

550 ff. Is this prophetic of the happy result } Is it characteristic 
of the poet himself } 

552. How do you account for the phenomenon of the ' midnight 
sun ' .? 



114 THE PRINCESS: [interlude. 



INTERLUDE. 

Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums, 

That beat to battle where he stands ; 
Thy face across his fancy comes, 

And gives the battle to his hands ; 
A moment, while the trumpets blow. 

He sees his brood about thy knee j 
The next, like fire he meets the foe, 

And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 

So Lilia sang; we thought her half-possessed, 
She struck such warbling fury thro' the words ; 
And, after, feigning pique at what she called 
The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime — 

I. Dawson quotes another version of this song, published sepa- 
rately : 

Lady, let the rolling drums 
Beat to battle where thy warrior stands ; 
Now thy face across his fancy comes. 
And gives the battle to his hands. 

Lady, let the trumpets blow, 
Clasp thy little babes about thy knee ; 

Now their warrior father meets the foe, 
And strikes him dead for thine and thee. 

Which is the better .-' 

Rolfe says : ' The interlude was added in the 3d ed. There the 
song begins thus : 

When all among the thundering drums 
Thy soldier in the battle stands ; 



and ends with 



Strikes him dead for them and thee. 

Tara ta tantara. 



In the 4th ed. it was changed to its present form.' 
10. Cf. IV. 41. 
12. Raillery. In what passages has this manifested itself? 



INTERLUDE.] A MEDLEY. 115 

Like one that wishes at a dance to change 

The music '■ — clapped her hands and cried for war, 

Or some grand fight to kill and make an end; 15 

And he that next inherited the tale 

Half turning to the broken statue, said, 

' Sir Ralph has got your colors; if I prove 

Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me ? ' 

It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb 20 

Lay by her, like a model of her hand. 

She took it and she flung it. ' Fight,' she said, 

' And make us all we would be, great and good.' 

He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, 

A cap of Tyrol borrowed from the hall, 25 

Arranged the favor, and assumed the Prince. 

17. Cf. Prol. 99. 

22. Flung it. Gloves were usually flung, in chivalrous times, in 
token of defiance. 

23. Great and good. Has the Princess shown herself either ? 

What was gained by inserting this Interlude .•* 



116 THE PRINCESS: [party. 



Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound, 

We stumbled on a stationary voice, 

And ' Stand, who goes ? ' ' Two from the palace ' I. 

' The second two ; they wait,' he said ; ' pass on ; 

His Highness wakes ; ' and one that clashed in arms, 5 

By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led. 

Threading the soldier-city, till we heard 

The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake 

From blazoned lions o'er the imperial tent 

Whispers of war. 

Entering, the sudden light lo 

Dazed me half-blind ; I stood and seemed to hear, 
As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes 
A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies, 
Each hissing in his neighbor's ear ; and then 
A strangled titter, out of which there brake 15 

On all sides, clamoring etiquette to death. 
Unmeasured mirth ; while now the two old kings 
Began to wag their baldness up and down, 
The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth, 
The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew, 20 

And slain with laughter rolled the gilded Squire. 

At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears. 
Panted from weary sides ' King, you are free ! 
We did but keep you surety for our son, 

2. Stationary voice. The voice of a stationary (Lat. stationarius), 
or sentinel. 
4. The second two. Who 1 Cf. IV. 222. 
7. Threading. Cf. IV. 242. 
21. Gilded Squire. Gorgeously dressed youth, not yet a knight. 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 117 

If this be he, — or a draggled mawkin, thou, 25 

That tends her bristled grunters in the sludge : ' 

For I was drenched with ooze, and torn with briers, 

More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath. 

And all one rag ; disprinced from head to heel. 

Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm 30 

A whispered jest to some one near him, ' Look, 

He has been among his shadows.' ' Satan take 

The old women and their shadows ! (thus the King 

Roared) make yourself a man to fight with men. 

Go ; Cyril told us all' 

As boys that slink 35 

From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, 
Away we stole, and transient in a trice 
From what was left of faded woman-slough 
To sheathing splendors and the golden scale 
Of harness, issued in the sun, that now 40 

Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, 
And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us, 
A little shy at first, but by and by 
We twain, with mutual pardon asked and given 
For stroke and song, resoldered peace, whereon 45 

Followed his tale. Amazed he fled away 
Thro' the dark land, and later in the night 
Had come on Psyche weeping : ' Then we fell 
Into your father's hand, and there she lies. 
But will not speak, nor stir.' 

He showed a tent 5° 

A stone-shot off ; we entered in, and there 

25. Mawkin. Menial servant. , In The Last Tournajnent Ten- 
nyson speaks of the ' swineherd's malkin,' nialkin being the same 
word. 

26. Sludge. Mire. 

28. From the sheath. When it has just blossomed. 
37. Transient. Making a change. 



118 THE PRINCESS: [part v. 

Among piled arms and rough accoutrements, 

Pitiful sight, wrapped in a soldier's cloak, 

Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot, 

And pushed by rude hands from its pedestal, 55 

All her fair length upon the ground she lay ; 

And at her head a follower of the camp, 

A charred and wrinkled piece of womanhood, 

Sat watching like a watcher by the dead. 

Then Florian knelt, and 'Come,' he whispered to her, 60 
'Lift up your head, sweet sister; lie not thus. 
What have you done but right ? you could not slay 
Me, nor your prince ; look up ; be comforted ; 
Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought, 
When fallen in darker ways.' And likewise 1 : 65 

' Be comforted ; have I not lost her too. 
In whose least act abides the nameless charm 
That none has else for me ? ' She heard, she moved. 
She moaned, a folded voice ; and up she sat. 
And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth 7° 

As those that mourn half-shrouded over death 
In deathless marble. ' Her,' she said, 'my friend — 
Parted from her — betrayed her cause and mine — 
Where shall I breathe ? Why kept ye not your faith ? 
O base and bad ! What comfort ? none for me ! ' 75 

To whom remorseful Cyril, ' Yet I pray 

54. Tennyson has abundance of statues and sculpture in this 
poem. 

60-65. Luce (p. 54) cites this passage, and also 78-102, as exam- 
ples of weakness in Tennyson. He says : ' Even in his charm we 
often find a softness which sometimes suggests want of strength, 
and is akin to effeminacy. ... As to the source of much of this 
weakness in Tennyson, ... we may find it in the earlier work of 
Keats.' 

69. Folded voice. Is not this an affected expression ? 

74. Why kept ye not your faith ? Cf. II. 275-280. 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 119 

Take comfort ; live, dear lady, for your child ! ' 
At which she lifted up her voice and cried : 

' Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child, 
My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more! 80 

For now will cruel Ida keep her back ; 
And either she will die from want of care, 
Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say 
"The child is hers" — for every little fault, 
" The child is hers ; " and they will beat my girl 85 

Remembering her mother; O my flower! 
Or they will take her, they will make her hard. 
And she will pass me by in after-life 
With some cold reverence worse than were she dead. 
Ill mother that I was to leave her there, 90 

To lag behind, scared by the cry they made, 
The horror of the shame among them all ; 
But I will go and sit beside the doors, 
And make a wild petition night and day. 
Until they hate to hear me like a wind 95 

Wailing for ever, till they open to me. 
And lay my little blossom at my feet, 
My babe, my sweet Aglaia, my one child ; 
And I will take her up and go my way, 

77. Live ... for your child. Cf. the last line of the next song. 

79 ff. Luce says (p. 364) : ' Nothing, perhaps, could be weaker 
than Lady Psyche's lamentation.' On the other hand, Woodberry 
remarks : ' This highly wrought speech, in the manner of Tennyson's 
shorter idyls, stands out in poetic relief as the songs and idyl in 
VII.' Stopford Brooke ( Temtyson, p. 98) agrees with Luce : ' Com- 
pare the passion of motherhood as expressed in this magnificent 
poem [Wordsworth's Affliction of Margaret \ with that of Psyche. . . . 
There is no comparison. Indeed, the motherhood in Wordsworth's 
The Complaint and Her eyes are wild is closer, more intimate to the 
primal passion, than anything in Tennyson, save alw^ays the intense 
penetration of Rizpah^ 



120 THE PRINCESS: [part v. 

And satisfy my soul with kissing her ; loo 

Ah ! what might that man not deserve of me 

Who gave me back my child ? ' * Be comforted,' 

Said Cyril, ' you shall have it ; ' but again 

She veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so, 

Like tender things that being caught feign death, 105 

Spoke not, nor stirred. 

By this a murmur ran 
Thro' all the camp, and inward raced the scouts 
With rumor of Prince Arac hard at hand. 
We left her by the woman, and without * \ 

Found the gray kings at parle ; and ' Look you ' cried no 
My father ' that our compact be fulfilled ; 
You have spoilt this child ; she laughs at you and man ; 
She wrongs herself, her sex, and me, and him ; 
But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire ; 
She yields, or war.' 

Then Gama turned to me : "5 

' We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time 
With our strange girl ; and yet they say that still 
You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large ; 
How say you, war or not ? ' 

' Not war, if possible, 
O king,' I said, ' lest from the abuse of war, 120 

The desecrated shrine, the trampled year. 
The smoldering homestead, and the household flower 
Torn from the lintel — all the common wrong — 
A smoke go up thro' which I loom to her 

no. Parle. Parley, conference. 

121. Year. Harvest. 

124-5. A smoke . . . monster. ' Notice how in this expression 
the actual smoke ascending from the burning houses and granaries 
suggests, and is almost identified with, the moral distorting medium 
through which he fears the Princess will thenceforth regard him ' 
(Wallace). 



PART v.] A MEDLEY. 121 

Three times a monster ; now she lightens scorn 125 

At him that mars her plan, but then would hate 

(And every voice she talked with ratify it, 

And every face she looked on justify it) 

The general foe. More soluble is this knot 

By gentleness than war. I want her love. 130 

What were I nigher this altho' we dashed 

Your cities into shards with catapults ? 

She would not love ; — or brought her chained, a slave. 

The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord ? 

Not ever would she love ; but brooding turn i35 

The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance 

Were caught within the record of her wrongs. 

And crushed to death ; and rather, Sire, than this 

I would the old God of war himself were dead, 

Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, 140 

Rotting on some wild shore with ribs of wreck, 

Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice. 

Not to be molten out.' 

And roughly spake 
My father, ' Tut, you know them not, the girls. 
Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think '45 

That idiot legend credible. Look you. Sir ! 
Man is the hunter ; woman is his game ; 
The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, 
We hunt them for the beauty of their skins ; 

125. Lightens. Flashes. Cf. IT. 117. 
132. Shards. Cf. our v^ord. potsherd. 
134. An affected phrase? 

142. Mammoth. Explain. 

143. Spake. Brooke says (p. 158): 'Through the piece almost 
every phase of opinion on the matter is delivered by both men and 



omen. 

146. Idiot legend. Cf. I. 5. 
148. What species of animal does this suggest } 



122 THE PRINCESS: [party. 

They love us for it, and we ride them down. 150 

Wheedling and siding with them ! Out ! for shame ! 

Boy, there 's no rose that 's half so dear to them 

As he that does the thing they dare not do, 

Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes 

With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in 155 

Among the women, snares them by the score 

Flattered and flustered, wins, tho' dashed with death 

He reddens what he kisses ; thus I won 

Your mother, a good mother, a good wife. 

Worth winning ; but this firebrand — gentleness 160 

To such as her ! If Cyril spake her true. 

To catch a dragon in a cherry net. 

To trip a tigress with a gossamer, 

Were wisdom to it.' 

'Yea but Sire,' I cried, 
'Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No: 165 
What dares not Ida do that she should prize 
The soldier ? I beheld her, when she rose 
The yesternight, and storming in extremes. 
Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down 
Gagelike to man, and had not shunned the death, 170 

No, not the soldier's ; yet I hold her, king. 
True woman ; but you clash them all in one. 
That have as many differences as we. 
The violet varies from the lily as far 

As oak from elm ; one loves the soldier, one i7S 

The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, 

154-7. See p. xliv. 

157. Dashed with death. Bespattered with blood. Qi.Jul. Cas. 
III. i. 206. 

162. A cherry net. ' Fruit trees in England are commonly pro- 
tected by light nets against the depredations of birds ' (Wallace). 

172. True woman. Why did he hold her so .? What proof had 
she given .-• . 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 123 

And some unworthily ; their sinless faith 

A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty, 

Glorifying clown and satyr ; whence they need 

More breadth of culture ; is not Ida right ? i8o 

They worth it ? truer to the law within ? 

Severer in the logic of a -life ? 

Twice as magnetic to sweet influences 

Of earth and heaven ? And she of whom you speak, 

My mother, looks as whole as some serene 185 

Creation minted in the golden moods 

Of sovereign artists ; not a thought, a touch. 

But pure as lines of green that streak the white 

Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves ; I say, 

Not Uke the piebald miscellany, man, 190 

Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire, 

But whole and one ; and take them all-in-all. 

Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind, 

As truthful, much that Ida claims as right 

Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs i95 

As dues of Nature. To our point : not war ; 

Lest I lose all.' 

' Nay, nay, you spake but sense ' 

178. Cf. Guido Guinicelli, Of the Gentle Heart (in Rossetti's 
Dante and his Circle, p. 292) : 

The sun strikes full upon the mud all day ; 

It remains vile, nor the sun's worth is less, 
' By race I am gentle,' the proud man doth say ; 

He is the mud, the sun is gentleness. 

185. Cf. VII. 298 ff. 

188-9. Luce (p. 227) compares Coriolanus V. iii. 65-67, and 
adds : * Pure as a fine line ; a line of green ; penciled on white, the 
white of a snowdrop, of the " first snowdrop of the year " ; and on 
the snowdrop's inmost leaves.' 

190. Piebald. Explain. 

192. Whole. Complete, entire. C£. 185. 



124 THE PRINCESS: [party. 

Said Gama. 'We remember love ourself 

In our sweet youth ; we did not rate him then 

This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows. ' 200 

You talk almost like Ida ; she can talk ; 

And there is something in it, as you say ; 

But you talk kindlier ; we esteem you for it. — 

He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, 

I would he had our daughter ; for the rest, 205 

Our own detention, why, the causes weighed, 

Fatherly fears — you used us courteously — 

We would do much to gratify your Prince — 

We pardon it ; and for your ingress here 

Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, 210 

You did but come as goblins in the night, 

Nor in the furrow broke the plowman's head, 

Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid, 

Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream ; 

But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, 215 

He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines. 

And speak with Arac ; Arac's word is thrice 

As ours with Ida ; something may be done — 

I know not what — and ours shall see us friends. 

You likewise, our late guests, if so you will, 220 

Follow us ; who knows ? we four may build some 

plan 
Foursquare to opposition.' 

Here he reached 

222. Foursquare. Wallace comments : ' This expression, denot- 
ing the best conformation for sturdy resistance, is used again in the 
Ode on the Death of the Duke of Welliiigtoit 39, where the " last 
great Englishman " is spoken of as 

that tower of strength 
Which stood foursquare to all the winds that blew.' 

The expression is Greek, rerpdYwj'oj, and is used by Aristotle. 



PART v.] A MEDLE V. 125 

White hands of farewell to my sire, who growled 

An answer which, half-muffled in his beard, 

Let so much out as gave us leave to go. 225 

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns 
Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring 
In every bole, a song on every spray 
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke 
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love 230 

In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed 
All o'er with honeyed answer as we rode ; 
And blossom-fragrant slipped the heavy dews 
Gathered by night and peace, with each light air 
On our mailed heads ; but other thoughts than peace 235 
Burnt in us when we saw the embattled squares 
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers 
With clamor ; for among them rose a cry 
As if to greet the king ; they made a halt ; 
The horses yelled ; they clashed their arms ; the drum 240 
Beat ; merrily-blowing shrilled the martial fife ; 
And in the blast and bray of the long horn 
And serpent-throated bugle, undulated 
The banner. Anon to meet us lightly pranced 
Three captains out ; nor ever had I seen 245 

Such thews of men ; the midmost and the highest 
Was Arac ; all about his motion clung 
The shadow of his sister, as the beam 
Of the East, that played upon them, made them glance 
Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, 250 

227. Rings. Cf. T/ie Talking Oak 84, 173. 
237 ff. See p. xliv. 

239-245. Hadley calls this a 'fine exhibition of "the pomp and 
circumstance of glorious war." ' 

250. Airy Giant's zone. The belt of the constellation Orion. 



126 THE PRINCESS: [part v. 

That glitter burnished by the frosty dark ; 

And as the fiery Sirius alters hue, 

And bickers into red and emerald, shone 

Their morions, washed with morning, as they came. 

252-3. Dawson says : ' When highest hi the heavens it unques- 
tionably appears white, but its altitude is never very great, and when 
low down on the horizon sailors notice the change of color referred 
to by the poet, and ascribe it correctly to atmospheric influences. 
Sirius has always been remarkable for scintillation, due probably to 
its great brightness. Sailors in ancient times observed all such 
things very closely, and Tennyson is following Homer, as will appear 
by some remarks on this passage in Proctor's Myths aiid Morals of 
Ast?'ono?}iy, p. 166: 

' " Every bright star when close to the horizon shows these colors, 
and so much the more distinctly as the star is the brighter. Sirius, 
which surpasses the brightest stars of the northern hemisphere full 
four times in lustre, shows these changes of color so conspicuously 
that they were regarded as specially characteristic of this star, inso- 
much that Homer speaks of Sirius (not by name, but as the ' Star 
of Autumn ' ) shining most beautifully ' when laved of ocean's wave,' 
— that is, when close to the horizon." ' 

Dawson adds : ' The expression " laved of ocean's wave " explains 
the " washed with morning " of our poet. The glitter of the early 
morning sun on the bright helmets of the brothers and the glance 
of light upon their armor as they rode, are vividly realized in this 
beautiful simile.' 

The Homeric passage referred to is Iliad V. 4-6 : ' She kindled 
flame unwearied from his helmet and shield, like to the star of 
summer that above all others glittereth bright after he hath bathed 
in the ocean stream.' 

Collins says : ' A beautiful expression, in which Tennyson had been 
anticipated by Browning, who describes Florence as : 

Washed by the morning water-gold, 

{Old Pictures in Florence^'' 
Memorize 252-4. 

253. Bickers. Flickers, glances unsteadily back and forth, A 
most expressive word. Cf. Gerai7tt and Enid : 

Turning round she saw 
Dust, and the points of lances bicker in it. 



PART v.] A MEDLEY. 127 

And I that prated peace, when first I heard 255 

War-music, felt the blind wild-beast of force, 
Whose home is in the sinews of a man. 
Stir in me as to strike ; then took the king 
His three broad sons ; with now a wandering hand 
And now a pointed finger, told them all ; 260 

A common light of smiles at our disguise 
Broke from their lips, and ere the windy jest 
Had labored down within his ample lungs. 
The genial giant, Arac, rolled himself 
Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words. 265 

' Our land invaded, 'sdeath ! and he himself 
Your captive, yet my father wills not war; 
And, 'sdeath ! myself, what care I, war or no ? 
But then this question of your troth remains ; 
And there 's a downright honest meaning in her ; 270 

She flies too high, she flies too high ! and yet 
She asked but space and fair-play for her scheme ; 
She pressed and pressed it on me — I myself. 
What know I of these things ? but, life and soul ! 
I thought her half-right talking of her wrongs ; 275 

I say she flies too high ; 'sdeath ! what of that ? 
I take her for the flower of womankind. 
And so I often told her, right or wrong. 
And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves. 
And, right or wrong, I care not ; this is all, 280 

I stand upon her side ; she made me swear it — 
'Sdeath — and with solemn rites by candle-light — 

268. 'Sdeath. An abbreviation of God's death ; an old expletive, 
originally an oath. 

270. This is good testimony ; Arac ought to have known her. 
Cf. 275, 277. Comparing Arac and Ida, not to speak of the other 
two brothers, with Gama, what sort of mother must they have 
had ? 



128 THE PRINCESS: [party. 

Swear by St. something — I forget her name — 

Her that talked down the fifty wisest men ; 

She was a princess too ; and so I swore. 285 

Come, this is all ; she will not ; waive your claim ; 

If not, the foughten field — what else ? — at once 

Decides it, 'sdeath ! against my father's will.' 

I lagged in answer, loth to render up 
My precontract, and loth by brainless war 290 

To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet ; 
Till one of those two brothers, half aside 
And fingering at the hair about his lip. 
To prick us on to combat ' Like to like ! 
The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.' 295 

A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow ! 
For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff, 
And sharp I answered, touched upon the point 

283-5. St. something . . . princess too. ' The reference is to 
St. Catharine of Alexandria, an almost, if not wholly, mythical per- 
sonage, round whose name has grown up avast amount of legendary 
lore. She is said to have lived about the beginning of the fourth 
century, and to have been the daughter of Costus, the half-brother 
of Constantine, by Sabinella, Queen of Egypt, whom she succeeded 
on the throne of that country. This story is of course entirely with- 
out historical warrant. She was remarkable for her learning and 
culture, which have won for her the title of the Patron Saint of 
Philosophy, and especially of ladies of high birth who pursue this 
study. According to the commonly received legend, the Emperor 
Maxentius (or, as some say, Maximin) sent the fifty wisest men of 
his court to convert her from Christianity, but she confuted them all 
with their own weapons of scholarly rhetoric, and won them over to 
her faith' (Wallace). 

Why not she, instead of her ? 

287. Foughten. The old form of the past participle. Cf. Henry 
IV. IV. vi. 16, and TJie Coming of Arthur 134-5. 

290. Brainless. Can you think of a truer characterization of 
war ? 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 129 

Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 

' Decide it here : why not ? we are three to three.' 3°° 

Then spake the third ' But three to three ? no 
more ? 
No more, and in our noble sister's cause ? 
More, more, for honor ; every captain waits 
Hungry for honor, angry for his king. 

More, more, some fifty on a side, that each 30S 

May breathe himself, and quick ! by overthrow 
Of these or those, the question settled die.' 
'Yea,' answered I, 'for this wild wreath of air, 
This flake of rainbow flying on the highest 
Foam of men's deeds — this honor, if ye will. 310 

It needs must be for honor if at all ; 
Since, what decision ? if we fail, we fail, 
And if we win, we fail ; she would not keep 
Her compact.' ' 'Sdeath ! but we will send to her,' 
Said Arac, 'worthy reasons why she should 3^5 

Bide by this issue ; let our missive thro'. 
And you shall have her answer by the word.' 

' Boys ! ' shrieked .the old king, but vainlier than a hen 
To her false daughters in the pool ; for none 
Regarded ; neither seemed there more to say ; 320 

Back rode we to my father's camp, and found 
He thrice had sent a herald to the gates. 
To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim, 

299. Explain. 

305. Fifty. Cf. Chaucer, KnighVs Tale. 
308. Cf. VII. 198. 

316. Missive. Either 'letter,' or 'messenger,' it is not easy to 
decide which. 

318. Cf. note on 433. 

319. False daughters. Ducklings. 



130 THE PRINCESS: [party. 

Or by denial flush her babbling wells 

With her own people's life ; three times he went ; 3-5 

The first he blew and blew, but none appeared ; 

He battered at the doors ; none came ; the next, 

An awful voice within had warned him thence ; 

The third, and those eight daughters of the plow 

Came sallying thro' the gates, and caught his hair, 'iip 

And so belabored him on rib and cheek 

They made him wild ; not less one glance he caught 

Thro' open doors of Ida stationed there 

Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm 

Tho' compassed by two armies and the noise 335 

Of arms ; and standing like a stately pine 

Set in a cataract on an island-crag, 

When storm is on the heights, and right and left. 

Sucked from the dark heart of the long hills, roll 

324. Cf. I. 214-5. 

336. Stately pine. Collins says : ' The fine simile in which Ida's 
unshaken firmness is compared to a pine vexed and tried by storm 
was evidently suggested by the simile in which Virgil compares 
yEneas under similar circumstances to an oak.' The Virgilian pas- 
sage is IV. 441 ff. (not II. 441 ff., as Collins has it): 'Even as when 
Alpine blasts strive one against another to tear up an oak vigorous 
in its ancient strength, blowing upon it, now from this point, now 
from that, a creaking is heard, and, as the trunk is shaken, the 
foliage deeply strews the ground ; the tree itself clings to the crag, 
and as far as it lifts its top to the air of heaven, so far does it extend 
its root to hell. Just so the hero is beaten upon by incessant en- 
treaties from every point, and feels the pain keenly in his mighty 
heart ; his resolve remains unshaken ; the tears that fall are vain.' 

On the other hand, compare the passage quoted by Rolfe from the 
Remains of ArtJmr Hugh Clough, dated in the Valley of Cauterets, 
Sept. 7, i86r : * I have been out for a walk with A. T. to a sort of 
island between two waterfalls, with pines on it, of which he retained 
a recollection from his visit of thirty-one years ago, and which, more- 
over, furnished a simile to T/ie Princess. He is very fond of this 
place, evidently.' Cf. IV. 472 ff. 

339-340. See p. xliv. 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 131 

The torrents, dashed to the vale ; and yet her will 340 

Bred will in me to overcome it or fall. 

But when I told the king that I was pledged 
To fight in tourney for my bride, he clashed 
His iron palms together with a cry ; 

Himself would tilt it out among the lads ; 345 

But overborne by all his bearded lords 
With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce 
He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur ; 
And many a bold knight started up in heat, 
And sware to combat for my claim till death. 350 

All on this side the palace ran the field 
Flat to the garden-wall ; and likewise here, 
Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, 
A columned entry shone, and marble stairs. 
And great bronze valves embossed with Tomyris 355 

And what she did to Cyrus after fight. 
But now fast barred ; so here upon the flat 
All that long morn the lists were hammered up, 
And all that morn the heralds to and fro. 
With message and defiance, went and came ; 360 

Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand. 
But shaken here and there, and rolling words 
Oration-like. I kissed it, and I read. 

340. Her will. Cf. I. 47. 

346 Bearded lords. Cf. 20. 

355. Valves Cf. IV. 184 — Tomyris. She was queen of the 
Massagetse In a battle with Cyrus the Great (B.C. 529), who had 
invaded her territory, the latter was slain. Tomyris had threatened 
him with his fill of blood, in consequence of his refusal to release 
her son, whom he had captured. Accordingly she now made a 
search for the body of Cyrus, and, finding it, suspended his head in 
a leather bag full of blood. 

358. Lists. Cf. Ivanhoe, Chap. VIII. 

361. Royal hand. Explain. 



132 THE PRINCESS: [party. 

* O brother, you have known the pangs we felt, 
What heats of indignation, when we heard 365 

Of those that iron-cramped their women's feet ; 
Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride 
Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge ; 
Of living hearts that crack within the fire 
Where smolder their dead despots ; and of those, — 37o 
Mothers, — that, all prophetic pity, fling 
Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops 
The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart 
Made for all noble motion ; and I saw 

That equal baseness lived in sleeker times 375 

With smoother men ; the old leaven leavened all ; 
Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights. 
No woman named; therefore I set my face 
Against all men, and lived but for mine own. 
Far off from men I built a fold for them ; 380 

I stored it full of rich memorial ; 
I fenced it round with gallant institutes, 
And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey. 
And prospered ; till a rout of saucy boys 
Brake on us at our books, and marred our peace, 3^5 

367-370. Of lands, etc. ' Allusion is made in the first two lines to 
Russian customs in the seventeenth century. One was that the bride, 
on her wedding day, should present her husband, in token of submis- 
sion, with a whip made by her own hands. . . . The last two lines refer 
to the Hindoo Suttee, now abohshed, in conformity with which widows 
were burned upon the funeral pyres of their husbands' (Dawson). 

370. Those. Hindoo mothers are meant. 

371. All prophetic pity. 'A curious expression, denoting their 
compassion for the hard fate awaiting their daughters in the future 
if they should have the misfortune to remain unmarried beyond the 
recognized period ' (Wallace). 

372. Flood. The Ganges. 

382. Institutes. Statutes, ordinances. 
385-6. See p. xliv. 



PART v.] A MEDLE Y. 133 

Masked like our maids, blustering I know not what 

Of insolence and love, some pretext held 

Of baby troth, invalid, since my will 

Sealed not the bond — the striplings ! — for their sport ! — 

I tamed my leopards ; shall I not tame these ? 390 

Or you or I ? for since you think me touched 

In honor — what, I would not aught of false — 

Is not our cause pure ? and whereas I know 

Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood 

You draw from, fight ; you failing, I abide 395 

What end soever ; fail you will not. Still, 

Take not his life ; he risked it for my own ; 

His mother lives ; yet whatsoe'er you do. 

Fight and fight well ; strike and strike home. O dear 

Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you 400 

The sole men to be mingled with our cause. 

The sole men we shall prize in the aftertime. 

Your very armor hallowed, and your statues 

Reared, sung to, when, this gad-fly brushed aside, 

We plant a solid foot into the Time, 405 

And mold a generation strong to move 

With claim on claim from right to right, till she 

Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself ; 

And Knowledge in our own land make her free. 

And, ever following those two crowned twins, 410 

Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain 

388. Cf. I. 33. 

390. Leopards. Cf. II. 19. 

391. Or you or I ? One of us two shall tame them. 
394. Mother's. Not ' father's,' observe. Cf. 496. 
399. See p. xliv. 

404. Gad-fly. Momentary annoyance. 

409. We are told ' The truth shall make you free ' (John 8. 32). 
Is truth identical with knowledge "i 



134 THE PRINCESS: [party. 

Of freedom broadcast over all that orbs 
Between the Northern and the Southern morn,' 

Then came a postscript dashed across the rest : 
* See that there be no traitors in your camp ; 415 

We seem a nest of traitors — none to trust 
Since our arms failed — this Egypt-plague of men ! 
Almost our maids were better at their homes, 
Than thus man-girdled here ; indeed, I think 
Our chiefest comfort is the little child 420 

411. Commerce and conquest. Is the poet thinking of England? 
— Fiery grain. Why fiery ? 

412. Orbs. Forms itself into an orb. Cf. the similar use of 
sphere in In Memoriam IX. 13 : 

Sphere all your lights around, above. 

413. What does morn connote ? 

414. Postscript. Is this a humorous touch } 

417. Egypt-plague. Cf. Exodus, Chaps. VIII and X. 

418. Anticipatory of VI. 317, 358 ff. 

420 ff. Cf. Tennyson's comment on p. 36. Dawson says (pp. 35- 
37) : ' The poem is a medley in this respect, for the leading charac- 
ters are all vanquished, all save one — Psyche's baby — she is the 
conquering heroine of the epic. Ridiculous in the lecture-room, the 
babe, in the poem, as in the songs, is made the central point upon 
which the plot turns ; for the unconscious child is the concrete em- 
bodiment of Nature herself, clearing away all merely intellectual 
theories by her silent influence. Ida feels the power of the child. 
The postscript of the dispatch sent to her brother in the height of 
her indignation, contains, as is fitting, the kernel of the matter. 
She says : 

I took it for an hour in mine own bed 
This morning ; there the tender orphan hands 
Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence 
The wrath I nursed against the world. 

Rash Princess ! that fatal hour dashed 

the hopes of half the world. 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 135 

Of one unworthy mother ; which she left ; 

She shall not have it back ; the child shall grow 

To prize the authentic mother of her mind. 

I took it for an hour in mine own bed 

This morning ; there the tender orphan hands 425 

Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence 

The wrath I nursed against the world ; farewell' 

I ceased ; he said, ' Stubborn, but she may sit 
Upon a king's right hand in thunderstorms, 
And breed up warriors ! See now — tho' yourself 430 

Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs 
That swallow common sense — the spindling king. 
This Gama, swamped in lazy tolerance. 

Alas for these hopes ! The cause, the great cause, totters to the fall 
when the Head confesses : 

I felt 

Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 

In the dead prime. 

Whenever the plot thickens the babe appears. It is with Ida on 
her judgment-seat. In the topmost height of the storm the wail of 
the " lost lamb at her feet " reduces her eloquent anger into in- 
coherence. She carries it when she sings her song of triumph. 
When she goes to tend her wounded brothers on the battle-field she 
carries it. Through it, and for it, Cyril pleads his successful suit, 
and wins it for the mother. For its sake the mother is pardoned. 
O fatal babe ! more fatal to the hopes of woman than the doomful 
horse to the proud towers of Ilion — for through thee the walls of 
pride are breached, and all the conquering affections flock in.' 

424. Cf. III. 228-9. 

431- Cf. IV. 338-9. 

433. Lazy tolerance. ' He was as helpless against the two 
widows who stuffed his daughter's head with theories, as he doubt- 
less was before Ida's mother in her lifetime. His absolute power- 
lessness over his children, not only over Ida, but over Arac and his 
brothers, is manifest when the tournament is arrayed in his presence 
in spite of his timidity ' (Dawson, p. 40). 



136 THE PRINCESS: [part v. 

When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, 

And topples down the scales ; but this is fixed 435 

As are the roots of earth and base of all : 

Man for the field and woman for the hearth ; 

Man for the sword and for the needle she ; 

Man with the head and woman with the heart ; 

Man to command and woman to obey ; 44° 

All else confusion. Look you ! the gray mare 

Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills 

From tile to scullery, and her small goodman 

Shrinks in his arm-chair, while the fires of hell 

Mix with his hearth ; but you — she 's yet a colt — 445 

Take, break her ; strongly groomed and straitly curbed, 

She might not rank with those detestable 

That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl 

434-5. Dawson quotes Dr. Antoinette Brown Blackwell's The 
Sexes throughout N'ature : 'Whenever brilliantly colored male birds 
have acquired something of maternal habits, tastes, and impulses, 
conversely the females seem always to have acquired some counter- 
balancing weight of male characters. They are large in relative 
size, are brilliantly colored, are active and quarrelsome, or are a 
little of all these together. The large majority of birds illustrate this 
law.' 

He goes on to say : * Decidedly an unpleasant prospect this, seeing 
that in a ballroom the fact is evident that already the male portion 
of our species have lost the gay attire they used to wear in former 
centuries.' 

440. Cf. Gen. 3. 16 : 'Thy desire shall be to the husband, and he 
shall rule over thee'; Eph. 5. 12: ' Wives, submit yourselves unto 
your own husbands, as unto the Lord.' Also Shakespeare, Troilus 
and Cressida I. iii. 85-124. 

441. Gray mare. Referring to the proverb found as early as 
Heywood {ca. 1 565) : ' The gray mare is the better horse.' 

443. Tile. Roof. — Scullery. Usually in basement (in England). 
— Goodman. Husband; a Shakespearian word, used as a term of 
familiarity, with a slight shade of contempt. 

447. Detestable. Adjective used as noun. 

448. Bantling. Used in the same vein as goodman, 443- 



PART v.] A MEDLEY. 137 

Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street. 

They say she's comely ; there 's the fairer chance ; 450 

/like her none the less for rating at her ! 

Besides, the woman wed is not as we, 

But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace 

Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, 

The bearing and the training of a child 455 

Is woman's wisdom.' 

Thus the hard old king. 
I took my leave, for it was nearly noon ; 
I pored upon her letter which I held. 
And on the little clause ' Take not his life ; ' 
I mused on that wild morning in the woods, 460 

And on the ' Follow, follow, thou shalt win ; ' 
I thought on all the wrathful king had said. 
And how the strange betrothment was to end; 
Then I remembered that burnt sorcerer's curse 
That one should fight with shadows and should fall, 465 

And like a flash the weird affection came : 
King, camp and college turned to hollow shows ; 
I seemed to move in old memorial tilts. 
And doing battle with forgotten ghosts. 
To dream myself the shadow of a dream ; 47° 

453. Suffers change of frame. A physiological fact. 
456. How nearly does this view (428-456) agree with Tennyson's 
own ? Cf. In Menioriam XL. st. 4 : 

Her oflfice there to rear, to teach, * 

Becoming, as is meet and fit, 

A Hnk among the days, to knit 
The generations each to each. 

459. Cf. 397. 

460-1. Cf. I. 89-99. 

464. Cf. I, 5-10. 

467. Hollow shows. Cf. III. 169. 

469. Forgotten ghosts. Cf. I. 17; IV. 539. 

470. Cf. Prol. 222 ; I. 18 ; ITI. 172. 



138 THE PRINCESS: [part v. 

And ere I woke it was the point of noon ; 

The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed 

We entered in, and waited, fifty there 

Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared 

At the barrier like a wild horn in a land 475 

Of echoes, and a moment, and once more 

The trumpet, and again ; at which the storm 

Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears 

And riders front to front, until they closed 

In conflict, with the crash of shivering points, 480 

And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream I dreamed 

Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed. 

And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, 

And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire. 

Part sat like rocks ; part reeled, but kept their seats ; 485 

Part rolled on the earth, and rose again, and drew ; 

Part stumbled, mixed with floundering horses. Down 

From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down 

From Arac's arm as from a giant's flail. 

The large blows rained, as here and everywhere 49° 

He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists. 

And all the plain, — brand, mace, and shaft, and shield — 

472. Lists. Cf. 358. 

473. Fifty. Cf. Chaucer, Kiiighfs Tale. Which is better, the 
tournament scene there or here ? 

474 ff. ' From here to the end of the canto we have one of the 
most rapid and vehement pieces of description in the language ' 
(Wallace). 

Is blared better than 'blew' ? 

475. Cf. the song on p. 85. = 

478. See p. xlv. 

491-3. See p. xlv. 

491. Mellay. General, confused conflict; from the French 
melee. Cedric was displeased with the use of the latter word {Ivan- 
hoe, Chap. VIIL). 

492. Brand, mace, and shaft. Define these nouns. 



PARTY.] A MEDLEY. 139 

Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged 

With hammers ; till I thought, ' Can this be he 

From Gama's dwarfish loins ? if this be so, 495 

The mother makes us most ' — and in my dream 

I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front 

Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes. 

And highest, among the statues, statue-like, 

Between a cymbaled Miriam and a Jael, 500 

With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, 

A single band of gold about her hair. 

Like a Saint's glory up in heaven ; but she 

No saint — inexorable — no tenderness — 

Too hard, too cruel : yet she sees me fight, 505 

Yea, let her see me fall ! With that I drave 

Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, 

And Cyril one. Yea, let me make my dream 

All that I would. But that large-molded man. 

His visage all agrin as at a wake, 510 

Made at me thro' the press, and, staggering back 

With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came 

493. Collins (p. 22) praises the onomatopoeic effect. Cf. I. 
213. 

499 ff. Study the art here. Why are the statues mentioned } 
Why the particular two of line 500 ? Why ' with Psyche's babe ' — 
why not as well alone, or with some one else ? Why ' a single band of 
gold ', and not the 'jewel' of IV. 254.? Why 'up in heaven'? 
What were Ida's feelings at this moment — can you judge from 

397? 

500. Cf. Exod. 15. 20, 21 ; Judges 4. 17-22. 

505. Sees. Why the change to the present ? 

509 ff. Hadley, commenting upon this passage, to 519, says : * The 
overwhelming onset of Prince Arac is described in verses not unfit 
for the exploits of divine Achilles.' 

510. Agrin. Rolfe compares Charlotte Bronte, Shirley: 'His 
hard features were revealed all agrin and ashine with glee.' 

Cf. 264. 



140 THE PRINCESS: [part v. 

As comes a pillar of electric cloud, 

Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains, 

And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes 5^5 

On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits, 

And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth 

Reels, and the herdsmen cry ; for everything 

Gave way before him ; only Florian, he 

That loved me closer than his own right eye, 520 

Thrust in between ; but Arac rode him down ; 

And Cyril seeing it, pushed against the Prince, 

With Psyche's color round his helmet ; tough, 

Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms ; 

But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote 525 

And threw him; last I spurred; I felt my veins 

Stretch with fierce heat ; a moment hand to hand. 

And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung. 

Till I struck out and shouted ; the blade glanced, 

I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth 53° 

Flowed from me ; darkness closed me ; and I fell. 

513 ff. Collins says : ' With this graphic description of the prog- 
ress of a thunderbolt compare Lucan's equally graphic description 
of the same thing, Pharsalia I. 152-8.' The pillar is a cyclone or 
tornado. 

514 ff. See p. xlv. 

520. Eye. Ocjilus, and its diminutive, ocellus, were used as 
terms of endearment in Latin ; so 6yu,/ia and ocpdaX/xos in Greek. 

523. Cf. Interlude 18 ff. 

524. Sinew-corded. Explain. 

531. Why did he fall? Was it the deepening of his trance, or 
was he wounded.'' Perhaps the sequel will show. 



Home they brought her warrior dead ; 

She nor swooned, nor uttered cry ; 
All her maidens, watching, said, 

* She must weep or she will die.' 

Then they praised him, soft and low, 

Called him worthy to be loved, 
Truest friend and noblest foe; 

Yet she neither spoke nor moved. 

Stole a maiden from her place, 

Lightly to the warrior stepped, 
Took the face-cloth from the face ; 

Yet she neither moved nor wept. 

Rose a nurse of ninety years, 

Set his child upon her knee ; 
Like summer tempest came her tears — 

' Sweet my child, I live for thee.' 

Dawson notes that this ' is probably a later version or adaptation of a song 
first published in a volume of selections issued in 1S65, and not found in most 
of the editions of Tennyson's collected works : 

Home they brought him slain with spears, 

They brought him home at even-fall ; 
All alone she sits and hears 

Echoes in his empty hall, 

Sounding on the morrow. 

The sun peeped in from open field, 

The boy began to leap and prance, 

Rode upon his father's lance, 
Beat upon his father's shield, 

' Oh hush, my joy, my sorrow ! ' 



He compares a passage in Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel^ Canto i ; and 
' a correspondent,' quoted in a footnote to Tennysoniana^ 2d ed., p. 105, calls 
the song ' a translation from the Anglo-Saxon fragment Gudrun, which may 
be found in Conybeare's Anglo-Saxon Poetry.^ Unfortunately, there never 
is, and probably never v^^as, such an Anglo-Saxon fragment. What is meant 
is the old Norse Tale of Gudrim {Gii^runarkvi'^a), vi^hich may be found, 
with a noble translation, in Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Poeticitm Boreale, 
Vol. I. The resemblance is not close, however. In the Norse poem the un- 
covering of the warrior's dead body starts the tears. This part runs : 

' Nevertheless Gudrun could not weep, she was so oppressed at her son's 
death, and so heavy-hearted over the king's [her husband's] corpse, 

' Then spake Goldrand, Giuki's daughter : " Thou knowest not, foster- 
mother, though thou be wise, how to comfort the young wife." She bade 
them uncover the king's body, and swept the sheet from off Sigurd, casting 
it to the ground before his wife's knees. " Look on thy love, lay thy mouth 
to his lips as if thou wert clasping thy living lord." 

' Gudrun cast one look upon him ; she saw the king's hair dripping with 
blood, his keen eyes dead, his breast scored by the sword. Then she fell upon 
the pillow with loosened hair and reddened cheeks ; her tears trickled like 
rain-drops down to her knee. And now Gudrun, Giuki's daughter, wept so, 
that the tears soaked thro' her tresses.' 



PART VI.] THE PRINCESS. 143 



VI. 

My dream had never died, or lived again. 
As in some mystic middle state I lay ; 
Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard ; 
Tho', if I saw not, yet they told me all 
So often that I speak as having seen. 

For so it seemed, or so they said to me, 
That all things grew more tragic and more strange ; 
That when our side was vanquished, and my cause 
For ever lost, there went up a great cry, 
' The Prince is slain ! ' My father heard, and ran 
In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque 
And groveled on my body, and after him 
Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaia. 

But high upon the palace Ida stood 
With Psyche's babe in arm ; there on the roofs 
Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang. 

' In the sixth canto the full strength of the poet is put forth. The 
field of battle, the wounded knights, the stricken Prince, the agonized 
father, the slowly relenting Princess, are the themes for powerful 
and pathetic description. Gradually the mists clear away from Ida's 
eyes, pity touches her heart, and all the kindly emotions crowd in 
fast in its train ' (Dawson, p. i8). 

I. That is, my state of trance had never ceased, notwithstanding 
my unconsciousness, or else it revived after an interval. Luce re- 
marks (p. 30S) : ' When . . . the next character begins his long solil- 
oquy, he is somewhat puzzled how to relate events he has not seen 
— incidents that occurred while he was unconscious, or his ravings 
while he was delirious in fever.' 

15. 'The same expression is used in The Palace of Art : 



144 THE PRINCESS: [part VI. 

' Our enemies have fallen, have fallen; the seed, 
The little seed they laughed at in the dark, 
Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk 
Of spanless girth, that lays on every side 20 

A thousand arms, and rushes to the sun. 

* Our enemies have fallen, have fallen ; they came ; 
The leaves were wet with women's tears ; they heard 
A noise of songs they would not understand ; 
They marked it with the red cross to the fall, 25 

And would have strown it, and are fallen themselves. 

Or the maid-mother by a crucifix, 

In tracts of pasture sunny-warm, 
Beneath branch-work of costly sardonyx, 

Sat smiling, babe in arrn.^ 

' The reviewers of Tennyson's earlier poems ridiculed this expres- 
sion unmercifully, comparing it with the "lance in rest " of the 
romances of chivalry. Some of their criticisms the poet seems to 
have accepted as just, for he modified the passages complained of, 
but this phrase he not only retained, but has repeated ' (Dawson). 

16. Cf. Judges, Chaps. 4 and 5. 

17 ff. Tennyson may have utilized such Scriptural suggestions as 
the following: Ps. 92.9,12, 14: 'For lo, thine enemies, O Lord, 
for lo, thine enemies shall perish. . . . The righteous shall flourish 
like the palm tree ; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. . . . They 
shall still bring forth fruit in old age ; ' Hos. 14. 5, 6 : ' He shall grow 
as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon. His branches shall 
spread, and his beauty shall be as the olive tree ; ' Ps. 80. 9-1 1 : 
' Thou preparedest room before it, and didst cause it to take deep 
root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow 
of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent 
out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river ; ' 
Jer. 46. 22 : ' They shall march with an army, and come against her 
with axes, as hewers of wood.' Cf. Henry VIII. V. v. 53-56 : 

He shall flourish, 
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches 
To all the plains about him ; our children's children 
Shall see this, and bless Heaven 

21. To the sun. On high. 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 145 

* Our enemies have fallen, have fallen ; they came, 
The woodmen with their axes : " lo the tree ! 
But we will make it faggots for the hearth, 

And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, 30 

And boats and bridges for the use of men." 

' Our enemies have fallen, have fallen ; they struck ; 
With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew 
There dwelt an iron nature in the grain ; 

The glittering axe was broken in their arms, 35 

Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade. 

' Our enemies have fallen, but this shall grow 
A night of Summer from the heat, a breath 
Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power; and rolled 
With music in the growing breeze of Time, 40 

The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs 
Shall move the stony bases of the world.' 

' And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary 
Is violate, our laws broken ; fear we not 
To break them more, in their behoof whose arms 45 

Championed our cause and won it with a day 
Blanched in our annals, and perpetual feast, 
When dames and heroines of the golden year 
Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, 
To rain an April of ovation round 5° 

36. Job 31. 22 : 'Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade.' 

40. Time. Cf. II. 356; IV. 496; VII. 90, 271. 

41. Fangs. There is an obsolete sense of /^;z^, as ' prong of a 
divided root.' 

Is this song in character? Cf. V. 424-7. To what epoch does 
such an ode belong? 

47. Blanched. ' That is, fortunate, propitious ; as the Latin albtis 
was sometimes used. Cf. Scott, Gity Mannering : "The dominie 
reckoned this as one of the white days of his life " ' (Rolfe). 

48. Golden year. Cf. The Golden Year. 

49. Spring. What is the figure ? 



146 THE PRINCESS: [part vr. 

Their statues, borne aloft, the three; but come. 

We will be liberal, since our rights are won. 

Let them not lie in the tents with coarse mankind, 

111 nurses ; but descend, and proffer these 

The brethren of our blood and cause, that there 55 

Lie bruised and maimed, the tender ministries 

Of female hands and hospitality.' 

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms. 
Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led 
A hundred maids in train across the park. 60 

Some cowled, and some bare-headed, on they came, 
Their feet in flowers, her loveliest ; by them went 
The enamored air sighing, and on their curls 
From the high tree the blossom wavering fell, 
And over them the tremulous isles of light 65 

Slided, they moving under shade; but Blanche 

53. Mankind. Man kind. A Shakespearian sense ; thus Tim. 
IV. iii. 490-1 : 

Because thou art a woman, and disclaim'st 
Flinty mankind. 

54. 111. Cf. V. 90. 

59. Great bronze valves. Cf. V. 355. 
65-6. See p. xlv. 

65. Tremulous isles of light. Cf. In Memoriam XXIV. 3-4 : 

The very source and fount of Day 

Is dashed with wandering isles of night. 

Also CEnone 176-8: 

And o'er her rounded form 
Between the shadows of the vine-bunches 
Floated the golden sunlights as she moved. 

And see Tennyson's letter, p. xl. 

Does tremulous have any other than a literal meaning here ? Cf. 
with sighing, 63. 

66. Slided. What is the usual form ? 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 147 

At distance followed ; so they came ; anon 

Thro' open field into the lists they wound 

Timorously ; and as the leader of the herd 

That holds a stately fretwork to the sun, 70 

And followed up by a hundred airy does, 

Steps with a tender foot, light as on air, 

The lovely, lordly creature floated on 

To where her wounded brethren lay; there stayed; 

Knelt on one knee, — the child on one, — and pressed 75 

Their hands, and called them dear deliverers. 

And happy warriors, and immortal names ; 

And said 'You shall not lie in the tents, but here. 

And nursed by those for whom you fought, and 

served 
With female hands and hospitality.' 80 

Then, whether moved by this — or was it chance? — 
She passed my way. Up started from my side 
The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye, 
Silent ; but when she saw me lying stark, 
Dishelmed and mute, and motionlessly pale, 85 

Cold even to her, she sighed; and when she saw 
The haggard father's face and reverend beard 
Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood 

69. Timorously. ' This word occupies in the metre of the line 
the place of a single foot only, the resolution of which into four 
short syllables that must be hurriedly pronounced indicates the 
timidity and nervousness with which the girls approach the ghastly 
scene' (Wallace). See p. xlv. 

70. Explain. What effect is intended > 
72. See p. xlv. 

80. Cf. 57. 

81. Was it chance ? Was it ? 

83. Whelpless eye. Is this a felicitous expression ? 

84. See p. xlv. 

88. Grisly twine. Explain. 



148 THE PRINCESS: [part vi. 

Of his own son, shuddered, a twitch of pain 

Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead passed 9° 

A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said : 

' He saved my life; my brother slew him for it.' 

No more ; at which the king in bitter scorn 

Drew from my neck the painting and the tress. 

And held them up ; she saw them, and a day 95 

Rose from the distance on her memory, 

When the good Queen, her mother, shore the tress 

With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche; 

And then once more she looked at my pale face ; 

Till, understanding all the foolish work loo 

Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all. 

Her iron will was broken in her mind ; 

Her noble heart was molten in her breast ; 

She bowed, she set the child on the earth ; she laid 

A feeling finger on my brows, and presently io5 

'O Sire,' she said, 'he lives; he is not dead; 

O let me have him with my brethren here 

In our own palace ; we will tend on him 

Like one of these ; if so, by any means, 

To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make no 

Our progress falter to the woman's goal.' 

She said ; but at the happy word ' He lives,' 
My father stooped, re-fathered o'er my wounds. 
So those two foes, above my fallen life, 

89-go. See p. xlv. 

92. Cf. V. 397. 

94. Cf. I. 37-39. 

97. Shore. Cf. V. 530. 
loi. Fancy. Explain. 
102. Iron will. Cf. II. 185; V. 340. 

114. Life. This corresponds in form with German Leib, 'body' ; 
here it almost corresponds in sense. 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 149 

With brow to brow like night and evening, mixed 115 

Their dark and gray ; while Psyche ever stole 

A little nearer, till the babe that by us, 

Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, 

Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass, 

Uncared for, spied its mother, and began 120 

A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance 

Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms 

And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal 

Brooked not, but clamoring out 'Mine — mine — not yours. 

It is not yours, but mine ; give me the child ! ' 125 

Ceased all on tremble ; piteous was the cry ; 

So stood the unhappy mother open-mouthed. 

And turned each face her way ; wan was her cheek 

With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn, 

Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye, 130 

And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half 

The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst 

The laces toward her babe ; but she nor cared 

Nor knew it, clamoring on, till Ida heard. 

Looked up, and rising slowly from me, stood 135 

Erect and silent, striking with her glance 

The mother, me, the child ; but he that lay 

Beside us, Cyril, battered as he was, 

118. Brede. Embroidery. Cf. Keats, Za;;/;a I. 158 : 

Spoilt all her silver mail, and golden brede. 

122. Falling. Small and fat. Apparently coined by Tennyson 
as an adjective, on the analogy of the noMn fatling, as in Matt. 22. 4. 
124. Brooked. Endured; almost = resisted. 
126. On tremble. Cf. 348, and Acts 13. 36. 

128. Each. Every. 

129. Hollow. To vi^hat noun does it properly belong .? To what 
red, in the next line ? 

132. Sacred. Does not modify the next word, but rather the 
phrase. 



150 THE PRINCESS: [part vi. 

Trailed himself up on one knee ; then he drew 

Her robe to meet his lips, and down she looked 140 

At the armed man sideways, pitying, as it seemed. 

Or self-involved ; but when she learnt his face, 

Remembering his ill-omened song, arose 

Once more thro' all her height, and o'er him grew 

Tall as a figure lengthened on the sand 145 

When the tide ebbs in sunshine ; and he said : 

' O fair and strong and terrible ! Lioness 
That with your long locks play the Lion's mane ! — 
But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible 
And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, 15° 

We vanquished, you the Victor of your will. 
What would you more t Give her the child ! remain 
Orbed in your isolation ; he is dead. 
Or all as dead ; henceforth we let you be; 
Win you the hearts of women; and beware i55 

Lest, where you seek the common love of these, 
The common hate with the revolving wheel 
Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis 
Break from a darkened future, crowned with fire, 
And tread you out for ever ; but howsoe'er 160 

Fixed in yourself, never in your own arms 
To hold your own, deny not hers to her ; 

144. Her height. Cf. II. 27. Must not the Prince have been 
small of size ? He seems always so impressed with the stature of 
Ida and the proportions of her brothers (V. 245 ff., 264, 488 ff., 
509 ff.). Or were they really so large t 

149-150. But Love . . . stronger. Is not this the teaching of 
the whole poem ? 

151. Of. According to; at the behest of. 

153. Orbed. Cf. IV. 129-130. 

157. Common hate. Cf. II. 439 ff. 

158. Nemesis. Goddess of retribution. 
161. Never. Cf. III. 226-232. 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 151 

Give her the child ! O if, I say, you keep 

One pulse that beats true woman, if you loved 

The breast that fed or arm that dandled you, 165 

Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer, 

Give her the child ! or if you scorn to lay it. 

Yourself, in hands so lately clasped with yours, 

Or speak to her, your dearest — her one fault 

The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill — 170 

Give me it : /will give it her.' 

He said; 
At first her eye with slow dilation rolled 
Dry flame, she listening ; after sank and sank, 
And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt 
Full on the child ; she took it : 'Pretty bud! i7S 

Lily of the vale ! half opened bell of the woods ! 
Sole comfort of my dark hour, when a world 
Of traitorous friend and broken system made 
No purple in the distance, mystery, — 

166. Port. Opening, avenue. Hallam Tennyson explains as 
' haven, from Latin partus ' (Wallace), but it must certainly be from 
porta, ' gate.' Cf. 2 Henry IV. IV. v. 23-24 : 

Golden care! 
That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide. 

And the similar use oi gate, as in Hamlet I. v. 66-67 = 

That swift as quicksilver it courses through 
The natural gates and alleys of the body. 

So Lear I. iv. 293-4 : 

Beat at this gate^ thus let thy folly in, 
And thy dear judgment out ! 

— Flint. Cf. 242. 

171. What actuates Cyril in this intercession ? Is he true to the 
nature we saw in him at first ? 

179. Cf. In Memoriam XXXVIII. 1-4: 



152 THE PRINCESS: [part vi. 

Pledge of a love not to be mine, farewell ;-h i8o 

These men are hard upon us as of old, 

We two must part ; and yet how fain was I 

To dream thy cause embraced in mine, to think 

I might be something to thee, when I felt 

Thy helpless warmth about my barren breast 185 

In the dead prime ! but may thy mother prove 

As true to thee as false, false, false to me ! 

And, if thou needs must bear the yoke, I wish it 

Gentle as freedom ' — here she kissed it ; then — 

' All good go with thee ! take it. Sir,' and so 190 

Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailed hands, 

Who turned half-round to Psyche, as she sprang 

To meet it with an eye that swum in thanks; 

Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot, 

And hugged and never hugged it close enough, 195 

And in her hunger mouthed and mumbled it, 

And hid her bosom with it ; after that 

Put on more calm, and added suppliantly : 

' We two were friends : I go to mine own land 
For ever ; find some other ; as for me, 200 

I scarce am fit for your great plans ; yet speak to me ; 
Say one soft word and let me part forgiven.' 

But Ida spoke not, rapt upon the child. 
Then Arac : ' Ida — 'sdeath ! you blame the man ; 

With weary steps I loiter on, 

Tho' always under altered skies 

The purple from the distance dies, 
My prospect and horizon gone. 

180. Love. Wedded love. 

186. Dead prime. The time just before dawn, probably ; called 
dead because the vital forces are then at their lowest, and because of 
the hush. 



PARTvr.] A MEDLEY. 153 

You wrong yourselves — the woman is so hard 205 

Upon the woman. Come, a grace to me ! 
I am your warrior ; I and mine have fought 
Your battle; kiss her ; take her hand, she weeps ; 
'Sdeath ! I would sooner fight thrice o'er than see it' 

But Ida spoke not, gazing on the ground; 210 

And reddening in the furrows of his chin, 
And moved beyond his custom, Gama said : 

' I 've heard that there is iron in the blood, 
And I believe it. Not one word ? not one ? 
Whence drew you this steel temper? not from me, 215 

Not from your mother, now a saint with saints. 
She said you had a heart — I heard her say it — 
"Our Ida has a heart — " just ere she died — 
" But see that some one with authority 

Be near her still ; " and I — I sought for one — 220 

All people said she had authority — 
The Lady Blanche ; much profit ! Not one word ; 
No ! tho' your father sues ; see how you stand 
Stiff as Lot's wife, and all the good knights maimed 
I trust that there is no one hurt to death, 225 

For your wild whim ; and was it then for this, 

205-6. The woman . . . woman. ' This unamiable trait results 
from woman's mission as the conservator of society. In this respect 
woman's character is very narrow, but she feels instinctively that she 
cannot afford to be lax in offenses against social laws. Psyche's 
weakness had in fact broken up Ida's university, and sins against 
the family tend to break up society ' (Dawson). 

Does woman's hardness upon woman always flow from this, her 
mission ? 

213. Iron. At what period in the world's history would he have 
heard this ? 

224. Lot's wife. Cf. Gen. 19. 26. 



154 THE PRINCESS: [part vi. 

Was it for this we gave our palace up, 

Where we withdrew from summer heats and state, 

And had our wine and chess beneath the planes. 

And many a pleasant hour with her that's gone, 230 

Ere you were born to vex us ? Is it kind ? 

Speak to her, I say; is this not she of whom, 

When first she came, all flushed you said to me 

Now had you got a friend of your own age. 

Now could you share your thought ; now should men see 235 

Two women faster welded in one love 

Than pairs of wedlock ; she you walked with, she 

You talked with, whole nights long, up in the tower, 

Of sine and arc, spheroid and azimuth. 

And right ascension. Heaven knows what ; and now 240 

A word, but one, one little kindly word, 

Not one to spare her ? out upon you, flint ! 

You love nor her, nor me, nor any ; nay. 

You shame your mother's judgment too. Not one ? 

You will not ? well — no heart have you, or such 245 

As fancies like the vermin in a nut 

Have fretted all to dust and bitterness.' 

So said the small king, moved beyond his wont. 

But Ida stood, nor spoke, drained of her force 
By many a varying influence and so long. 250 

Down thro' her limbs a drooping languor wept ; 

227. Palace. Cf. I. 145 ff. 
229. Planes. Cf. III. 159. 

234. Of your own age. How old was Ida, then ? Cf. II. 92-93. 
238-240. Is the state of society which this implies compatible 
with that of V. 358, 482 ff. .? For the technical terms cf. III. 344-5. 
247. Fretted. Ci. A Dirge g-io : 

Nothing but the small cold worm 
Fretteth thine enshrouded form. 

251, Wept. Why this term ? 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 155 

Her head a little bent ; and on her mouth 

A doubtful smile dwelt like a clouded moon 

In a still water ; then brake out my sire, 

Lifting his grim head from my wounds : ' O you, 255 

Woman, whom we thought woman even now. 

And were half fooled to let you tend our son. 

Because he might have wished it — but we see 

The accomplice of your madness unforgiven, 

And think that you might mix his draught with death, 260 

When your skies change again ; the rougher hand 

Is safer ; on to the tents ; take up the Prince.' 

He rose, and while each ear was pricked to attend 
A tempest, thro' the cloud that dimmed her broke 
A genial warmth and light once more, and shone 265 

Thro' glittering drops on her sad friend. 

' Come hither, 

Psyche,' she cried out, ' embrace me, come, 
Quick while I melt ; make reconcilement sure 
With one that cannot keep her mind an hour ; 

Come to the hollow heart they slander so ! 270 

Kiss and be friends, like children being chid ! 
/seem no more ; /want forgiveness too; 

1 should have had to do with none but maids. 
That have no links with men. Ah false but dear. 

Dear traitor, too much loved, why? — why? — Yet see, 275 
Before these kings we embrace you yet once more 
With all forgiveness, all oblivion, 
And trust, not love, you less. 

And now, O Sire, 
Grant me your son, to nurse, to wait upon him, 

255. Grim head. Cf. 87-88. 

267. What influence has at length made Ida relent ? 

278. And now. Does this throw any light on the last question ? 



156 THE PRINCESS: [part vi. 

Like mine own brother. For my debt to him, 280 

This nightmare weight of gratitude, I know it ; 

Taunt me no more ; yourself and yours shall have 

Free adit ; we will scatter all our maids 

Till happier times each to her proper hearth ; 

What use to keep them here — now ? grant my prayer. 285 

Help, father, brother, help ; speak to the king ; 

Thaw this male nature to some touch of that 

Which kills me with myself, and drags me down 

From my fixed height to mob me up with all 

The soft and milky rabble of womankind, 290 

Poor weakling even as they are.' 

Passionate tears 
Followed ; the king replied not ; Cyril said : 
' Your brother. Lady, — Florian, — ask for him 
Of your great Head — for he is wounded too — 
That you may tend upon him with the prince.' 295 

'Ay so,' said Ida with a bitter smile, 
'Our laws are broken ; let him enter too.' 
Then Violet, she that sang the mournful song. 
And had a cousin tumbled on the plain, 
Petitioned too for him. ' Ay so,' she said, 3°° 

' I stagger in the stream ; I cannot keep 
My heart an eddy from the brawling hour ; 
We break our laws with ease, but let it be.' 
' Ay so ? ' said Blanche : * Amazed am I to hear 
Your Highness ; but Your Highness breaks with ease 3^5 
The law Your Highness did not make ; 't was I. 

281. Nightmare weight. Cf. no. 

283. Adit. Access, entrance ; a rare word in this sense. 

288. Kills me with myself. Destroys my factitious hardness 
with the true womanly nature which has been in abeyance. 

289. Mob me up. Why doesn't Ida take more kindly to her 
own womanly nature .? Is there any good reason why she should 
so despise it? 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 157 

I had been wedded wife, I knew mankind, 

And blocked them out ; but these men came to woo 

Your Highness — verily I think to win.' 

So she, and turned askance a wintry eye ; 310 

But Ida, with a voice that like a bell 
Tolled by an earthquake in a trembling tower, 
Rang ruin, answered full of grief and scorn. 

' FUng our doors wide ! all, all, not one, but all ; 
Not only he, but by my mother's soul, 3^5 

Whatever man lies wounded, friend or foe, 
Shall enter, if he will. Let our girls flit. 
Till the storm die ! but had you stood by us. 
The roar that breaks the Pharos from his base 
Had left us rock. She fain would sting us too, 320 

But shall not. Pass, and mingle with your likes. 
We brook no further insult, but are gone.' 

31 1-3. Like a bell . . . ruin. ' It would be hard to conceive a 
more impressive simile to denote the final acknowledgment of com- 
plete surrender. A tower can resist most natural shocks, but an 
earthquake is supreme. Ida, the intrepid, the fierce, the terrible, 
who " stood foursquare to all the winds that blew," is overthrown at 
last by a mightier influence than any effort of physical force or dread 
of personal danger. And herself, as she reels, clashes the alarum 
of her own doom ' (Wallace). 

313. After this, the first two editions have a much longer speech. 

318. Had you stood by us. Was this the real reason that the 
plan was abandoned — that Lady Blanche had weakened or had 
been disloyal ? 

319. Pharos. Lighthouse ; cf. 312. 

321. Shall not. Had she not.? After this line the first two 
editions insert these, among others : 

Go, help the half-brained dwarf, Society, 
To find low motives unto noble deeds, 
To fix all doubt upon the darker side. 

Is this a just characterization ? 



158 THE PRINCESS: [part vi. 

She turned ; the very nape of her white neck 
Was rosed with indignation ; but the Prince 
Her brother came ; the king her father charmed 325 

Her wounded soul with words ; nor did mine own 
Refuse her proffer, lastly gave his hand. 

Then us they lifted up, dead weights, and bare 
Straight to the doors ; to them the doors gave way 
Groaning, and in the Vestal entry shrieked. 330 

The virgin marble under iron heels ; 
And on they moved and gained the hall, and there 
Rested ; but great the crush was, and each base. 
To left and right, of those tall columns, drowned 
In silken fluctuation and the swarm 335 

Of female whisperers ; at the further end 
Was Ida by the throne, the two great cats 
Close by her, like supporters on a shield, 
Bow-backed with fear; but in the centre stood 
The common men with rolling eyes ; amazed 340 

They glared upon the women, and aghast 
The women stared at these, all silent, save 
When armor clashed or jingled ; while the day, 
Descending, struck athwart the hall, and shot 
A flying splendor out of brass and steel, 345 

That o'er the statues leapt from head to head, 

330. See p. xlv. — Groaning . . . shrieked. With what feelings 
are the doors and entry credited, and why ? 

332. Hall. Cf. XL 17, 61, 416; IV. 253, 456. 

333. See p. xlv. 

334. Those tall columns. Cf. II. 412. 

337. Cats. Cf. II. 17; III. 165, 170. 

338. Supporters. Look up the coats of arms of some of our 
States, and note the supporters on each side. 

339- With fear. Why.? 

344. Athwart the hall. Cf. II. 449; was that the same room? 



PART VI.] A MEDLEY. 159 

Now fired an angry Pallas on the helm, 

Now set a wrathful Dian's moon on flame ; 

And now and then an echo started up, 

And shuddering fled from room to room, and died 350 

Of fright in far apartments. 

Then the voice 
Of Ida sounded, issuing ordinance ; 
And me they bore up the broad stairs, and thro' 
The long-laid galleries, past a hundred doors, 
To one deep chamber shut from sound, and due 355 

To languid limbs and sickness ; left me in it ; 
And others otherwhere they laid ; and all 
That afternoon a sound arose of hoof 
And chariot, many a maiden passing home 
Till happier times ; but some were left of those 360 

Held sagest ; and the great lords out and in, 
From those two hosts that lay beside the walls. 
Walked at their will ; and everything was changed. 

347-8. Pallas was the goddess of wisdom, and Diana of purity. 
Why are they now represented as ' angry ' and ' wrathful ' ? — Try to 
see a picture of these goddesses as represented in marble. 

351. Of fright. Why so represented .^ 

361. Held sagest. Cf. VII. 69-71. 



Ask me no more ; the moon may draw the sea ; 

The cloud may stoop from heaven and take the shape 
With fold to fold, of mountain or of cape ; 

But O too fond, when have I answered thee ? 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more ; what answer should I give ? 

I love not hollow cheek or faded eye ; 

Yet, O my friend, I will not have thee die ! 
Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live ; 
Ask me no more. 

Ask me no more ; thy fate and mine are sealed ; 

I strove against the stream, and all in vain ; 

Let the great river take me to the main ; 

No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield ; 

Ask me no more. 

' This song is equally musical and monosyllabic. Of 125 words in it all are 
monosyllables except six, and those are disyllables' (Rolfe). 

Wallace says : ' This feature imparts a peculiar stateliness to the composition, 
emphasizing the solemnity of its tone without impairing its melody, though 
the latter is of a more sombre character than that which pervades the lighter 
and more rapid movement of polysyllabic songs, such as (to take an instance 
written in the same metre) A Welcome to Her Royal Highness Marie Alex- 
androvna, Duchess of Edinburgh. This peculiar mournful and reserved tone 
is strikingly noticeable in such of Shakespeare's Sonnets as are constructed 
after this monosyllabic type.' 

Is this more, or less, exactly fitted to its place than any other of the inter- 
spersed songs ? 

1-3. Cf. Shelley, Love's Philosophy: 

The fountains mingle with the river, 

And the rivers with the ocean ; 
The winds of heaven mix for ever 

With a sweet emotion ; 
Nothing in the world is single ; 

All things by a law divine 
In one another's being mingle ; 

Why not I with thine ? 

12. Dawson says: 'See Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, for a similar 
line: 

And all in vain you strive against the stream.' 



f'ART VII.] THE PRINCESS. 



VII. 



161 



So was their sanctuary violated, 

So their fair college turned to hospital; 

At first with all confusion ; by and by 

Sweet order lived again, with other laws ; 

A kindlier influence reigned ; and everywhere 5 

Low voices, with the ministering hand. 

Hung round the sick ; the maidens came, they talked, 

They sang, they read ; till she not fair began 

To gather light, and she that was, became 

Her former beauty treble ; and to and fro 10 

With books, with flowers, with angel offices, 

Like creatures native unto gracious act, 

And in their own clear element, they moved. 

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, 
And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. 15 

Old studies failed ; seldom she spoke ; but oft 
Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours 
On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men 
Darkening her female field ; void was- her use, 

Luce says (p. 228) that this canto contains mthin itself— 'not 
humor, for it is the "solemn close " — but almost all the other excel- 
lencies of poetry ; and it contains nothing but such excellencies.' 

4. Sweet order. Why sweet? 

6. Low voices. Cf. King Lear V. iii. 273-4 : 

Her voice was ever soft, 
Gentle, and low — an excellent thing in woman. 

8-10. She . . . treble. How often this may be observed ! 
15. Her pride is not yet conquered. 

18. Leaguer. The army beleaguering the place. 

19. Void was her use. Cf. Aylmer's Field: 

The gentle creature, shut from all 
Her charitable use. 



162 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze 20 

O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 

Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, 

Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, 

And suck the blinding splendor from the sand, 

And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn 25 

Expunge the world ; so fared she gazing there ; 

So blackened all her world in secret, blank 

And waste it seemed and vain ; till down she came, 

And found fair peace once more among the sick. 

And twilight dawned ; and morn by morn the lark 30 

Shot up and shrilled in flickering gyres, but I 
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life ; 
And twilight gloomed ; and broader-grown the bowers 
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven, 
Star after star, arose and fell ; but I, 35 

Boynton says : ' This, like most genuinely poetic expressions, loses 
force in proportion as it gains explicitness, when it is turned into 
prose. Her life was empty of its usual occupations, and she had as 
yet found nothing to take their place. Her being was already stirred 
by the inward pleading of emotions which she had abjured ; but she 
had no thought, as yet, of laying aside her practical aims.' 

Bristed remarks {Amer. Rev. VHI. 37) : ' Meaning that " her occu- 
pation was gone," I suppose ; but it is not easy to get that sense, or 
any sense, out of the words.' 

20-26. Collins says : ' The magnificent simUe is taken literally 
from Iliad IV. 275 : "As when a goatherd from some hill peak sees a 
cloud coming across the deep with the blast of the west wind behind 
it; and to him, being as he is afar, it seems blacker, even as pitch, 
as it goes along the deep, bringing a great whirlwind." Compare, 
too, Lucretius (VI. 256 sqq.), who has imitated the same simile.' 
But cf. Tennyson's own statement, p. xxxvii. 

23. Verge. Cf. IV. 29. 

25. Tarn. Small mountain lake. 

33. Gloomed. Ci. Ulysses \i^: 

There gloom the dark broad seas. 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 163 

Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay 
Quite sundered from the moving Universe, 
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand 
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep. 

But Psyche tended Florian ; with her oft 40 

Melissa came ; for Blanche had gone, but left 
Her child among us, willing she should keep 
Court-favor ; here and there the small bright head, 
A light of healing, glanced about the couch. 
Or thro' the parted silks the tender face 45 

Peeped, shining in upon the wounded man 
With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves 
To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw 
The sting from pain ; nor seemed it strange that soon 
He rose up whole, and those fair charities 50 

Joined at her side ; nor stranger seemed that hearts 
So gentle, so employed, should close in love. 
Than when two dewdrops on the petal shake 
To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, 
And slip at once all-fragrant into one. 55 

Less prosperously the second suit obtained 
At first with Psyche. Not tho' Blanche had sworn 
That after that dark night among the fields 
She needs must wed him for her own good name ; 
Not tho' he built upon the babe restored ; 60 

Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but feared 
To incense the Head once more ; till on a day 
When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind 
Seen but of Psyche ; on her foot she hung 

36. Weird doubts. Cf. IV. 538, 548. 

51. Joined. Joined in. 

58. Cf. V. 47-48. 

60. Cf. V. 101-2. 



164 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

A moment, and she heard, at which her face 65 

A little flushed, and she passed on ; but each 
Assumed from thence a half-consent involved 
In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace. 

Nor only these ; Love in the sacred halls 
Held carnival at will, and flying struck 70 

With showers of random sweet on maid and man. 
Nor did her father cease to press my claim, 
Nor did mine own, now reconciled ; nor yet 
Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole ; 
Nor Arac, satiate with his victory. 75 

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat ; 
Then came a change ; for sometimes I would catch 
Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard, 
And fling it like a viper off, and shriek, 
'You are not Ida ;' clasp it once again, 80 

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not. 
And call her sweet, as if in irony, 
And call her hard and cold, which seemed a truth ; 
And still she feared that I should lose my mind, 
And often she believed that I should die ; 85 

Till out of long frustration of her care. 
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons, 
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks 
Throbbed thunder thro' the palace floors, or called 
On flying Time from all their silver tongues — 9° 

And out of memories of her kindlier days, 
And sidelong glances at my father's grief, 

71. Random sweet. What sorts of objects are flung at carnival 
time ? 

90. Cf. I. 213-4. 

91-97. For such sequences of lines beginning with the same word, 
cf. Prol. 44-47, II. 56-58, IV. 284-8, and VII. 81-85. 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 165 

And at the happy lovers heart in heart — 

And out of hauntings of my spoken love, 

And lonely listenings to my muttered dream, 95 

And often feeling of the helpless hands, 

And v^ordless broodings on the wasted cheek — 

From all, a closer interest flourished up, 

Tenderness touch by touch ; and last, to these. 

Love, like an Alpine harebell hung vi^ith tears loo 

By some cold morning glacier ; frail at first 

And feeble, all unconscious of itself. 

But such as gathered color day by day. 

Last I woke sane, but well-nigh close to death 
For weakness; it was evening ; silent light 105 

Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought 
Two grand designs; for on one side arose 
The women up in wild revolt, and stormed 
At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they crammed 
The forum, and half-crushed among the rest no 

100. Love. ' Notice how the position of this word, a mono- 
syllable at the beginning of the line, followed by a pause, accentu- 
ates its importance as the climax of this long enumeration ; cf. 290, 
below^ ' (Wallace). 

log. Oppian law. ' This was a sumptuary law passed during 
the time of the direst distress of Rome, when Hannibal was almost 
at the gates [b.c. 215]. It enacted that no woman should wear a 
gay-colored dress, or have more than half an ounce of gold orna- 
ments, and that none should approach within a mile of any city or 
town in a car drawn by horses [unless on account of public sacri- 
fices]. The war being concluded, and the emergency over, the 
women demanded the repeal of the law. They gained one consul, 
but Cato, the other one, resisted. The women rose, thronged the 
streets and forum, and harassed the magistrates until the law was 
repealed [B.C. 195] ' (Dawson). The story is related by Livy, Bk. 
XXXIV. 

no. Forum. Livy XXXIV. i : ' Omnis vias urbis aditusque in 
forum obsidebant.' 



166 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

A dwarf-like Cato cowered. On the other side 

Hortensia spoke against the tax ; behind, 

A train of dames ; by axe and eagle sat, 

With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls, 

And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins, 115 

The fierce triumvirs ; and before them paused 

Hortensia pleading ; angry was her face. 

I saw the forms ; I knew not where I was ; 
They did but look like hollow shows ; nor more 
Sweet Ida ; palm to palm she sat ; the dew 120 

Dwelt in, her eyes, and softer all her shape 
And rounder seemed ; I moved ; I sighed ; a touch 
Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand ; 
Then all for languor and self-pity ran 

Mine down my face, and with what life I had, 125 

And like a flower that cannot all unfold, 
So drenched it is with tempest, to the sun. 
Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her 
Fixed my faint eyes, and uttered whisperingly: 

' If you be what I think you, some sweet dream, 130 

I would but ask you to fulfil yourself ; 

111. Dwarf-like. So represented in order to enhance the glory 
of his opponents, just as they were depicted as ' Titanic' — Cowered. 
In reality, hardly. 

112. Hortensia. 'Daughter of the orator Q. Hortensius. She 
partook of his eloquence, and spoke before the triumvirs in behalf 
of the wealthy matrons, when these were threatened with a special 
tax to defray the expenses of the war against Brutus and Cassius.' 
This must have been B.C. 43. 

113. Axe and eagle. Standing respectively for the civil and the 
military power. 

115. Wolf's-milk. Romulus and Remus were said to have been 
suckled by a she-wolf. 

iig. Hollow shows. Cf. III. 169 ; V. 467. 
120. Dew. Cf. II. 295-6. 



PA RT V 1 1 . ] A MEDLE Y. 167 

But if you be that Ida whom I knew, 

I ask you nothing ; only, if a dream. 

Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night. 

Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die.' 135 

I could no more, but lay like one in trance, 
That hears his burial talked of by his friends. 
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign. 
But lies and dreads his doom. She turned; she paused; 
She stooped; and out of languor leapt a cry; 140 

Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death ; 
And I believed that in the living world 
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips ; 
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose 
Glowing all over noble shame; and all 145 

Her falser self slipped from her like a robe, 
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood 
Than in her mold that other, when she came 
From barren deeps to conquer all with love ; 
And down the streaming crystal dropped; and she 150 

143. Cf. Locksley Hall 38 : 

And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips. 

146. Note how this serves also to introduce the picture of the 
unclothed Aphrodite. 

147. Mood. Effectively contrasted with mold. 

148 ff. Bristed observed {Am. Rev. VIII. 36) that Tennyson per- 
haps had in mind the shorter Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, which he 
quotes. 

Bayard Taylor thus criticizes : ' The italicized passage [i 50-4] 
contains an exquisite, rapid picture of Aphrodite, floating along the 
wave to her home at Paphos ; but what must we think of the lover 
who, in relating the supreme moment of his passion, could turn 
aside to interpolate it? Its very loveliness emphasizes his utter 
forgetfulness of the governing theme ; and, whether the situation be 
called dramatic or not, it is amenable to the strictest laws of dra- 
matic art.' Cf. Stedman, Victorian Poets, pp. 225-6. 



168 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides, 

Naked, a double light in air and wave, 

To meet her Graces, where they decked her out 

For worship without end ; nor end of mine. 

Stateliest, for thee ! But mute she glided forth, 155 

Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, 

Filled thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep. 

Deep in the night I woke; she, near me, held 
A volume of the Poets of her land ; 
There to herself, all in low tones, she read. 160 

* Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white ; 
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk ; 
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font ; 
The fire-fly wakens ; waken thou with me. 

Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, 165 

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me. 

Now lies the Earth all Danae to the stars, 
And all thy heart lies open unto me. 

153. Graces. The Homeric Hymn has ' Hours': 

Her lovingly the golden Hours received, 
And clad in robes immortal ; and they set 
Upon her head divine a golden crown, etc. 

154-5. Nor . . . thee. A beautiful transition. 

155* Stateliest. How does this accord with previous descrip- 
tions of Ida ? Note its relevancy to the mention of Aphrodite. 

159. Poets. Cf. II. 164. 

163. Winks. A graphic term, 

165. * Darwin, in his Animals and Plajtts under Domesticatiott^ 
vol. i. p. 305, speaks of a white variety of peacock. . . The simile is 
not a happy one, however' (Dawson). 

167. All Danae to the stars. ' Open to their light falling upon 
her in a golden shower, like that in which Jupiter came down to 
visit Danae ' (Rolfe). 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 169 

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves 
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me. 17° 

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, 
And slips into the bosom of the lake ; 
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip 
Into my bosom and be lost in me.' 

I heard her turn the page; she found a small i75 

Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read. 

' Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain height ; 
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang). 
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills ? 

But cease to move so near the heavens, and cease i8o 

To glide a sunbeam by the blasted pine, 
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire ; 

170. Furrow. Cf. III. 2. 

176. Sweet Idyl. ' Possibly, so far as objective beauty and finish 
are concerned, the nonpareil of the whole poem. It is an imitation 
of the apostrophe of Polyphemus to Galatea, and never were the 
antique and modern feeling more finely contrasted : the one, clear, 
simple, childlike, perfect (in the Greek) as regards melody and tone ; 
the other, nobler, more intellectual, the antique body with the 
modern soul. The substitution of the mountains for the sea, as the 
haunt of the beloved nymph, is the Laureate's only departure from 
the material employed by Theocritus ' (Stedman, Victorian Poets, 
p. 228). 

'The shepherd is calling his love from the chill and barren, though 
lofty and beautiful heights, down into the fruitful and smiling 
valleys of practical life, where she may find happiness by imparting 
it, and by sharing its duties ' (Dawson). 

178-9. Stedman compares Theocritus (as above) : 

Now will I learn to swim, that I may see 
What pleasure thus to dwell in water depths 
Thou findest ! 
182. Sparkling spire. The sharp pinnacled rocks of the Alpine 
mountains are meant, locally called 'needles' (Aiguilles). For the 
Alpine scenery, Wallace compares Byron's Manfred I. ii, and Cole- 
ridge's Hymn before Sunrise. 



170 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

And come, for Love is of the valley, come, 

For Love is of the valley, come thou dowrn 

And find him ; by the happy threshold he, 185 

Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize. 

Or red with spirted purple of the vats, 

Or foxlike in the vine ; nor cares to w^alk 

With Death and Morning on the Silver Horns, 

Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, 190 

Nor find him dropped upon the firths of ice . 

That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 

To roll the torrent out of dusky doors. 

But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 

To find him in the valley ; let the wild 195 

Lean-headed eagles yelp alone ; and leave 

188. Foxlike in the vine. • A reminiscence of the Song of Solo- 
mon : " Take me the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines." 
Or of Theocritus more probably. Idyll I : " Two foxes, one is roam- 
ing up and dow^n the rows, spoiling the ripe grapes " ' (Dawson). 

i8g. 'In the early editions we find Silver Horns, but all the more 
recent ones print " silver horns." The former is, of course, to be 
preferred, on account of the obvious reference to the Silberhorn, one 
of the peaks or spurs of the Jungfrau, and markedly the most silvery- 
white part of the summit, as seen from Interlachen and its vicinity. 

' Morning walks on the mountains here, as '' o'er the dew of yon 
high eastern hill " in Hamlet (I. i. 167) ; and Death is her companion 
because life has no home on those " Alpine summits cold," or must 
face Death in attempting to scale them. Dawson thinks that the 
poet introduces Death into the picture because the mountains in the 
early light " have a chill ashen hue, as of deathly pallor " ; but our 
explanation is simpler, and has been approved by the poet ' (Rolfe). 

191-3. The firths ... doors. 'This,' says Bayard Taylor, 'is 
almost incomprehensible to one who has not looked with his own 
bodily eyes upon the Mer de Glace. The poem, in fact, abounds 
with instances where the expression as a whole is weakened and 
confused by the author's tendency to make each particular complete, 
without reference to its relation to others.' 

193. Dusky doors. Dark caves of ice, at the lower end of the 
glaciers. 

196-7. Leave . . . slope. Stedman compares Theocritus, Idyll 

XL 43 : 

Leave the green sea to stretch itself to shore. 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 171 

The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 

Their thousand '.vreaths of dangling water-smoke, 

That like a broken purpose waste in air ; 

So waste not thou ; but come ; for all the vales 200 

Await thee ; azure pillars of the hearth ^ 

Arise to thee ; the children call, and I, 

Thy shepherd, pipe, and sweet is every sound. 

Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet : 

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 205 

197. Note how the use of the verbs of motion animates the passage. 
ig8. Cf. The Lotos-Eaters 8 : 

And, like a downward smoke, the slender stream 
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. 

The Staubbach, in the valley of Lauterbrunnen, derives its name 
from this phenomenon. 

199. 'This simile is remarkable as being an illustration of a fact 
in external Nature by reference to a moral phenomenon in man, the 
reverse being the common rule. There is a parallel case in the first 
book of Virgil's ALneid, where Neptune's imperious abatement of a 
storm at sea is compared to the power that a grave and reverend 
public character has of allaying the excitement of a turbulent mob ' 
(Wallace). 

201. Azure pillars of the hearth. See p. xxiii. 

203-4. Collins remarks : ' The repetition of " sweet " is precisely : 
... " Sweet is the voice of the heifer, sweet her breath, sweet, too, 
the voice of the calf" ( [Theocritus], Idyll VIII).' 

205-7. ' Who, after three such lines, will talk of English as a 
harsh and clumsy language, and seek in the effeminate and monot- 
onous Italian for expressive melody of sound ? Who cannot hear 
in them the rapid rippling of the water, the stately calmness of the 
wood-dove's note, and, in the repetition of short syllables and soft 
liquids in the last line, the 

Murmuring of innumerable bees ? ' 

(Charles Kingsley.) 

* In these last lines there is an overpowering imaginative charm, 
.something almost magical in its bewitchment, which makes us think 
iof the words of Keats, that to him a fine phrase was an intoxipating^ 
delight. It is a melody, the finest and most magical melody of which 
words are capable ' (Dawson, Makers of Modern English, p. 174). 



172 THE PRINCESS: [part vir. 

The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
And murmuring of innumerable bees.' ^- 

So she low-toned ; while with shut eyes I lay 
Listening ; then looked. Pale was the perfect face ; 

' Observe in the first of these lines how the striking accumulation 
of additional short syllables expresses the quick rippling movement 
of the water, and in the other two how the gentle cooing of the doves 
and humming of the bees seem reproduced in the dominance of the soft 
* o ' and ' u ' sounds and the profiision of liquid labials ' (Wallace). 

In connection with the foregoing, we may note what Knowles says 
of Tennyson {Nmeteenth Century XXXIII. 171) : ' His acquaintance 
with all previous poetry was unlimited, and his memory of it amazing. 
He would quote again and again with complete delight the passages 
which were his favorites, stopping and calling upon his hearer to 
consider the beauty of this or that line, and repeating it to admire 
it the more. His reading was always in a grand, deep, measured 
voice, and was rather intoning on a few notes than speaking. It was 
like a sort of musical thunder, far off or near — loud-rolling or 
"sweet and low" — according to the subject, and once heard could 
never be forgotten. It made no difference whence a fine line or 
passage came ; it struck him equally with pleasure, when he heard 
or came across it, whether it were another man's or his own. He 
would pause in precisely the same way to call out " That 's magnifi- 
cent ! " "What a line!" "Isn't that splendid.'"' whether reading 
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, or himself. He was struck by 
the beauty of the art without thinking for one moment of the artist. 
. . . He often insisted that the grandest music in the English lan- 
guage was in Milton, and especially in the first book of Paradise 
Lost, and he would repeatedly chant out with the deepest admiration, 
as the finest of all, the passage [I. 446-457]. As a single line he 
said he knew hardly any to exceed for charm 

Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams, 
unless it were Wordsworth's great line in Thitern Abbey : 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns.' 
206. Collins compares Virgil's {Ed. i. 58) : 

Nee gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo. 

208. Low-toned. Cf. 6. 
209-212. Cf. IV. 363 ff. 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 173 

The bosom with long sighs labored ; and meek 210 

Seemed the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes ; 

And the voice trembled, and the hand. She said 

Brokenly, that she knew it, she had failed 

In sweet humility ; had failed in all ; 

That all her labor was but as a block 215 

Left in the quarry ; but she still were loth, 

She still were loth to yield herself to one 

That wholly scorned to help their equal rights 

Against the sons of men and barbarous laws. 

She prayed me not to judge their cause from her 220 

That wronged it, sought far less for truth than power 

In knowledge ; something wild within her breast, 

A greater than all knowledge, beat her down. 

And she had nursed me there from week to week ; 

Much had she learnt in little time. In part 225 

It was ill counsel had misled the girl 

To vex true hearts ; yet was she but a girl — 

' Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce ! 

When comes another such? never, I think. 

Till the sun drop, dead, from the signs.' 

Her voice 230 
Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands, 
And her great heart thro' all the faultful Past 
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break ; 
Till notice of a change in the dark world 

213. See p. xlvi. 

218. Equal. Cf. I. 130; IV. 56. 

219. Barbarous laws. Cf. II. 117. 
226. Whose } 

230. Signs. Of the zodiac. 

234-7. ' When the dawn of love in the Princess's heart is begin- 
ning, the early dawn of nature to which he compares it was never 
more fully or more tenderly imagined than in these lines of lovely 
simplicity' (Brooke, Tennyson, p. 160). 



174 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

Was lisped about the acacias, and a bird, 235 

That early woke to feed her little ones. 
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light ; 
She moved, and at her feet the volume fell. 

' Blame not thyself too much,' I said, ' nor blame 
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws; 240 

These were the rough ways of the world till now. 
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know 
The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink 
Together, dwarfed or godlike, bond or free ; 
For she that out of Lethe scales with man 245 

The shining steps of Nature, shares with man 
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal, 
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands — 

239-280. Blame ... be. Memorize. 

245. Lethe. Tennyson here, as in The Ttvo Voices, follows Virgil 
{A^iieid VI. 748-751) and Plato {Republic) in postulating 'that the 
souls of the dead, after a due course of purification, are made to 
drink of the water of the river Lethe (oblivion), that they may 
return to animate new bodies, in utter forgetfulness of their former 
existence on earth.' Thus, in T/ie Tivo Voices, he says : 

As old mythologies relate, 

Some draught of Lethe might await 

The slipping thro' from state to state. 

Here, however, the poet means scarcely more by ' and of Lethe ' 
than 'from the moment of birth.' 

246. Shining steps. CL In Alejnori am UW. 1^-16: 

The great world's altar-stairs, 

That slope through darkness up to God. 

248. Fair young planet. ' It is difficult to discover the astro- 
nomical allusion here, or what the precise appropriateness of the 
word planet may be when used to signify the young generation of 
mankind. Evidently the poet means to say that the influence of the 
mothers of any given generation of men shapes the course of the 
world during that generation ' (Dawson). 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 175 

If she be small, slight-natured, miserable, 

How shall men grow ? But work no more alone ! 250 

Our place is much ; as far as in us lies 

We two will serve them both in aiding her — 

Will clear away the parasitic forms 

That seem to keep her up, but drag her down — 

Will leave her space to burgeon out of all 255 

Within her — let her make herself her own 

To give or keep, to live and learn and be 

All that not harms distinctive womanhood. 

For woman is not undeveloped man. 

One might think of 'fair young planet' as this beautiful world of 
Nature and of men, still in its infancy, and to be determined in its 
future course by woman (cf. Con. 77-79). See T/ie Day Dream 

231-2 : 

For we are ancients of the earth, 
And in the morning of the times. 

It will be noted that there is no explicit mention in this sentence of 
children ; it is only of man and woman. Lines 245-7 are a series 
of parallelisms : 'scales with man,' 'shares with man,' 'moves with 
him '; to introduce abruptly the thought of another generation at 
this point, and in obscure periphrasis, might therefore be regarded 
as inartistic. I do not venture to decide ; the line is a difficult one. 
251. Our place is much. ' Noblesse oblige.' 

254. Cf. Prol. 127-8 ; II. 47-54. 

255. Burgeon. Burst forth, as a plant sprouts. 
258. Note Tennyson's wise limitation. 

259 ff . This is but to give poetic expression to very evident things, 
but it is also to give expression to the only " thinkable " philosophy 
of the matter. Tennyson has added nothing to our knowledge, but 
he has beautifully summed for us, as an artist should, the teaching 
of Nature, our mother' (Dixon, Tennyson Primer, p. 65). Cf. 
Brooke, Tennyso7t, p. 162 : 

' It [beauty] is first in Tennyson's, as it ought to be in every artist's 
heart. The subject-matter is bent to the necessity of beauty. The 
knowledge displayed in it, the various theories concerning w^oman- 
hood, the choice of scenery, the events, all are chosen and arranged 
so as to render it possible to enshrine them in beautiful shapes. 



176 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

But diverse ; could we make her as the man, 260 

Sweet Love was slain ; his dearest bond is this, 

Not like to like, but like in difference. 

Yet in the long years liker must they grow ; 

The man be more of woman, she of man ; 

He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 265 

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world ; 

She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 

Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind ; 

Till at the last she set herself to man, 

Like perfect music unto noble words ; 270 

And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, 

Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers, 

Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be, 

Self-reverent each and reverencing each. 

Distinct in individualities, 275 

But like each other even as those who love. 

Then comes the statelier Eden back to men ; 

Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and calm ; 

Then springs the crowning race of humankind. 

The general direction toward loveliness is never lost sight of by the 
poet. It is not that moral aims are neglected, or the increase of 
human good, or the heightening of truth, or the declaring of knowl- 
edge ; but it is that all these things are made subservient to the 
manifestation of beauty. It is the artist's way, and it is the highest 
way.' 

263. Luce says (p. 230) : ' Already women are less maternal, less 
wifely, less lovable. . . . Our remaining reflection will be a judicial 
one : " It is indispensable to acquire the advantage ; it is lamentable 
to incur the evil." ' 

268. This had not been Ida's view; cf. I. 136. 

271. Upon the skirts of Time. In some distant age. Not very 
clear or felicitous. 

274. Self-reverent. Cf. ffiw^w.? 142-3: 

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
These three alone lead life to sovereign power. 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. Yll 

May these things be ! ' 

Sighing she spoke : * I fear 280 

They will not.' 

' Dear, but let us type them now 
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest 
Of equal ; seeing either sex alone 
Is half itself, and in true marriage lies 

Nor equal, nor unequal ; each fulfils 285 

Defect in each, and always thought in thought, 
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow, 
The single pure and perfect animal, 

279. Crowning race. Cf. the close of In Memoriam : 

The crowning race 

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look 
On knowledge. . . . 

No longer half-akin to brute, 

For all we thought, and loved, and did, 
And hoped, and suffered, is but seed 

Of what in them is flower and fruit. 

281-290. Dear . . . life. Memorize. 

282. This proud watchword. Which had been much employed 
in the poem. 

284. Is half itself. A Platonic doctrine, oddly developed by 
Aristophanes as one of the speakers in the Symposium (189-193). 
Here is a specimen : ' Each of us, when separated, is but the inden- 
ture of a man, having one side only, like a flat fish, and he is always 
looking for his other half. . . . And when one of them finds his 
other half, . . . the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friend- 
ship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I 
may say, even for a moment.' 

288. Animal. ' Ordinarily, when this word is applied to a human 
being, it is intended in a depreciatory sense, as of one whose higher 
nature has been swamped by his merely brute passions. Here there 
is of course no such connotation, the w^ord being used in its original 
sense of "living creature." It is so found in Dante, Inferno V. 88, 
where Francesca addresses the Poet : 

C''^ O animal grazioso e benigno, 



178 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

The two-celled heart beating, with one full stroke, 
Life.' 

And again sighing she spoke: 'A dream 290 

That once was mine ! what woman taught you this ? ' 

'Alone,' I said, 'from earlier than I know. 
Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, 
I loved the woman ; he that doth not, lives 
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self, 295 

Or pines in sad experience worse than death. 
Or keeps his winged affections clipped with crime ; 
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one 
Not learned, save in gracious household ways. 
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, 300 

No angel, but a dearer being, all dipped 
In angel instincts, breathing Paradise, 
Interpreter between the Gods and men. 
Who looked all native to her place, and yet 
On tiptoe seemed to touch upon a sphere 305 

Too gross to tread ; and all male minds perforce 
Swayed to her from their orbits as they moved. 
And girdled her with music. Happy he 

i.e.., " O creature gracious and benign." We may compare also 
Shakespeare's Hamlet II. ii. 312: "A man! ...the paragon of 
animals ! " ' (Wallace). 

289-290. See p. xlvi. 

290. Bristed criticizes the metre {Amer. Rev. VIII. 37). 

292-312. Alone . . . day. Memorize. 

297. Cf. Aylmer's Field 273-7 '■ 

He believed 
This filthy marriage-hindering Mammon made 
The harlot of the cities ; nature crossed 
Was mother of the foul adulteries 
That saturate soul with body. 

307-8. Swayed . . . music. An allusion to the music of the 
spheres. Cf. Merchant of Venice V. i. 58-65 ; Twelfth Night III. i. 
115; As You Like It II. vii. 6. 



PART VII.] A MEDLEY. 179 

With such a mother ! faith in womankind 

Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 310 

Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall 

He shall not blind his soul with clay.' 

^But I,' 
Said Ida, tremulously ; ' so all unlike — 
It seems you love to cheat yourself with words ; 
This mother is your model. I have heard 3^5 

Of your strange doubts ; they well might be ; I seem 
A mockery to my own self. Never, Prince ; 
You cannot love me.' 

' Nay, but thee,' I said, 
* From yearlong poring on thy pictured eyes. 
Ere seen I loved, and loved thee seen, and saw 320 

Thee woman thro' the crust of iron moods 
That masked thee from men's reverence up, and forced 
Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood ; now. 
Given back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee. 
Indeed I love ; the new day comes, the light 325 

Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults 
Lived over; lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead, 
My haunting sense of hollow shows ; the change, 
This truthful change in thee has killed it. Dear, 
Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine, 33° 

Like yonder morning on the blind half-world ; 
Approach and fear not ; breathe upon my brows ; 

309. Mother. Cf. I. 22-24 ; V. 159, 184-9, 398- With the fore- 
going passage may be compared Wordsworth's ' She was a phantom 
of dehght,' and Lowell's My Love. 

318. Thee. Why are these forms used from here to the end of 
the canto ? 

323. On. Into. — Pranks. The intrusion into the College. — 
Saucy. Cf. V. 384. 

331. Blind. Dark, unlighted. 

332. Approach and fear not. Why should she fear ? Cf. this 
with V. 134. 



180 THE PRINCESS: [part vii. 

In that fine air I tremble, all the past 

Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this 

Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come 335 

Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels 

Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me, 

I waste my heart in signs ; let be. My bride. 

My wife, my life. O we will walk this world. 

Yoked in all exercise of noble end, 34° 

And so thro' those dark gates across the wild 

That no man knows. Indeed I love thee ; come, 

Yield thyself up ; my hopes and thine are one ; 

Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself ; 

Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me.' 345 

Commenting on lift thine eyes, 327, Luce says: 'This is exas- 
perating enough ; but when we come to the insolent condescension 

of the words 

Approach and fear not, 

we have lost all patience with the man. And we are wrong ; it is 
not the man, but the Medley.' 

335. Is morn to more. Originally, I scarce believe. 

337. Weeds. In the earlier editions this was flowers. Bayard 
Taylor comments : ' They gave us a vision of the autumnal haze, 
slowly gathering from myriads of flowers as they burn away in the 
last ardors of summer [!]. But now the last line . . . only paints for 
us an ordinary piece of farm-work. Besides, the repetition of ee in 
"reels" and "weeds" utterly destroys the original melody, which 
requires the open, expansive sound of " flowers." ' 

On the other hand cf. Fortn. Rev. II (1865). 402 : ' The courage 
of writing " weeds," instead of the commonplace " flowers " has 
given the simile a truth beyond all praise.' 



CONCLUSION.] A MEDLEY. 181 



CONCLUSION. 

So closed our tale, of which I give you all 

The random scheme as wildly as it rose ; 

The words are mostly mine ; for when we ceased 

There came a minute's pause, and Walter said, 

' I wish she had not yielded ! ' then to me, 

' What if you dressed it up poetically ! ' 

So prayed the men, the women ; I gave assent ; 

Yet how to bind the scattered scheme of seven 

Together in one sheaf? What style could suit? 

The men required that I should give throughout 

The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque 

With which we bantered little Lilia first ; 

The women — and perhaps they felt their power. 

For something in the ballads which they sang. 

Or in their silent influence as they sat, 

Had ever seemed to wrestle with burlesque. 

And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close — 

They hated banter, wished for something real, 

A gallant fight, a noble princess — why 

Not make her true-heroic, true-sublime ? 

Or all, they said, as earnest as the close ? 

Which yet with such a framework scarce could be. 

Then rose a little feud betwixt the two. 

Betwixt the mockers and the realists ; 

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both. 

And yet to give the story as it rose, 

I moved as in a strange diagonal. 

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them. 

14. Ballads. Cf. the Interlude. 

24. Realists. Not used in the sense now current. 



182 THE PRINCESS: [conclusion. 

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part 
In our dispute ; the sequel of the tale 30 

Had touched her ; and she sat, she plucked the grass. 
She flung it from her, thinking; last, she fixed 
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, 
' You — tell us what we are ; ' who might have told, 
For she was crammed with theories out of books, 35 

But that there rose a shout ; the gates were closed 
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, 
To take their leave, about the garden rails. 

So I and some went out to these ; we climbed 
The slope to Vivian Place, and turning saw 40 

The happy valleys, half in light, and half 
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace ; 
Gray halls alone among their massive groves ; 

35. Note the sarcasm. 

39. The first edition has 

And I and some went out, and mingled with them, 

and immediately continues with 81. 

40. Slope. Cf. Prol. 54, 55. 

41 ff. Walters says (Tennyson, pp. 62-63) : 'The second edition, 
called for in 1848, gave the poet an opportunity of dedicating The 
Princess to Henry Lushington, admittedly the most suggestive of 
his critics, and not the least ardent of his admirers from the first. It 
is said, moreover, that the mansion, Vivian Place, . . . was the home 
of the Lushington family, near Maidstone. One of the favorite 
haunts of Tennyson, after the departure of the family for Kent, was 
the district between Rochester and Maidstone, and over Blue Bell 
Hill, whence could be seen [quoting 41-47]. It was this part of the 
country which Dickens, writing to Forster, declared to be *' one of 
the most beautiful walks in England " ; and the famous " Kit's Coty 
House" (the "Tomb in the Wood "), dating from Saxon times, 
which Dickens knew so well, is believed to have suggested to Tenny- 
son his similitude of the " eight daughters of the plow," each " like 
a Druid rock." ' 

42. Far-shadowing. Intransitive, with a suggestion of the passive. 



CONCLUSION.] A MEDLEY. 183 

Trim hamlets ; here and there a rustic tower 

Half-lost in belt of hop and breadths of wheat; 45 

The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas ; 

A red sail, or a white ; and far beyond, 

Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France. 

' Look there, a garden ! ' said my college friend, 
The Tory member's elder son, ' and there ! 50 

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, 

49-71. 'This passage did not appear till the third edition (pub- 
lished in 1850). We no doubt owe its insertion to the Revolution 
of 1848, when Louis Philippe, King of the French, was forced to 
abdicate, and a republic was established in place of the monarchy. 
It may be added that on 2nd December, 1851, Charles Louis Napo- 
leon, President of the Republic, seized the supreme power by an act 
of unconstitutional violence, and was next year proclaimed Emperor 
of the French. This position he retained till 1870, when the empire 
was abolished and a republic reestablished. The hysterical wildness 
and lack of reverence and restraint that characterize the politics of 
"Celtic Demos" are extremely abhorrent to Walter Vivian, who 
may in this respect be said to represent the more sane and sober 
temper of the English people. It may be noticed that Tennyson 
has on several occasions dwelt with pride on the orderly methods of 
reform that mark the history of his own country ; cf. especially Love 
Thou Thy Land zxvdi You Ask Me Why ' (Wallace). 

Dawson comments : ' The poet's mind was no doubt full of the 
turmoil in France which broke out shortly after the publication of 
the first edition, but the poem is not improved as a work of art by 
the insertion of what must be called extraneous matter.' 

Cf. Brooke, Tennyson, pp. 36-37 : ' He saw but little of what 
France has done for us ; he had no gratitude to her for her audacity, 
her swiftness, her logical expansion into form of the thoughts of 
progress. ... He did not see our cool acceptance of the results for 
liberty which emerged after the mistakes of France had run their 
course. She bore the consequences of her mistakes, but in ex- 
hausting these she set the true form of certain ideas of liberty clear. 
We take the ideas she has set free, but we forget that she revealed 
them. There has been no ingratitude so great in the history of 
humanity as the ingratitude of Europe to France, and Tennyson 



184 THE PRINCESS: [conclusion. 

And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, 

A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled — 

Some sense of duty, something of a faith, 

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, 55 

Some patient force to change them when we will, 

Some civic manhood firm against the crowd — 

But yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat. 

The gravest citizen seems to lose his head. 

The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, 60 

The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 

A kingdom topples over with a shriek 

Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 

In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 

Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 65 

No graver than a schoolboys' barring out ; 

Too comic for the solemn things they are, 

Too solemn for the comic touches in them. 

Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream 

As some of theirs ; God bless the narrow seas ! 70 

I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.' 

' Have patience,' I replied, ' ourselves are full 
Of social wrong ; and maybe wildest dreams 
Are but the needful preludes of the truth ; 
For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, 75 

represented with great vividness this ingratitude in England.' But 
cf. 72-74. 

49. Garden. Cf. Gen. 13. 10, and Shakespeare, Taming of the 
Shrew I. i. 4. 

51. Narrow sea. Straits of Dover. Cf. Shakespeare, Merchant 

of Venice II. viii. 28-29 : 

The narrow seas that part 
The French and English. 

66. Barring out. The shutting out of a master from the school- 
room, as sometimes practised in England. 

6g. Tennyson, like Burke, is no friend to mere theorists. 



CONCLUSION.] A MEDLEY. 185 

The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. 
This fine old world of ours is but a child 
Yet in the go-cart. Patience ! Give it time 
To learn its limbs ; there is a hand that guides.' 

In such discourse we gained the garden rails, 80 

And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood, 
Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks. 
Among six boys, head under head, and looked 
No little lily-handed Baronet he, 

A great broad-shouldered genial Englishman, 85 

A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep, 
A raiser of huge melons and of pine, 
A patron of some thirty charities, 
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, 
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none ; 9° 

76. Faith. Dawson remarks : ' This strong faith runs through 
all of Tennyson's poems, causing them to be true " medicines for the 
mind." It is met in the earlier poems, especially in The Golden Fleece 
[ Year], and in the conclusion of Locksley Hall, in the poems of middle 
age as here, and in No. 125 of In Memoriam, and in the very last 
published volume, — as stanza iii. of the Children'' s Hospital, and 
the sonnet To Victor Hugo. This healthful hope, pervading all his 
writings, is one of the secrets of the poet's popularity and influence. 

79. There is a hand that guides. Knowles {Ninetee^ith Century 
XXXIII. 169) : ' He formulated once, and quite deliberately, his own 
religious creed in these words : " There 's a something that watches 
over us ; and our individuality endures ; that 's my faith, and that 's 
all my faith." This he said with such a calm ernphasis that I wrote 
it down (with the date) exactly and at once.' 

80. See 38. 

82. Tower. Circular group. — HoUy-oaks. I adopt the reading 
of the first edition ; the Macmillan Works has holly-hoaks ; the 
word is a variant of hollyhock, which occurs in Tennyson. 

87. Pine. Pineapples, a rarity in England, and frequently sold 
for a guinea each. 

go. Quarter-sessions. A court held quarterly, taking cognizance 
of minor felonies and misdemeanors. 



186 THE PRINCESS: [conclusion. 

Fair-haired and redder than a windy morn ; 

Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those 

That stood the nearest — now addressed to speech — 

Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed 

Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year 95 

To follow ; a shout rose again, and made 

The long line of the approaching rookery swerve 

From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer 

From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang 

Beyond the bourn of sunset ; O, a shout 100 

More joyful than the city-roar that hails 

Premier or king ! — Why should not these great Sirs 

Give up their parks some dozen times a year 

To let the people breathe ? — So thrice they cried, 

I likewise, and in groups they streamed away. 105 

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on. 
So much the gathering darkness charmed ; we sat 
But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, 
Perchance upon the future man ; the walls 
Blackened about us, bats wheeled, and owls whooped, no 
And gradually the powers of the night. 
That range above the region of the wind. 
Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up 

94. Closed. Included. 

96. Rose. First edition, arose. 

97. Rookery. Flight of crows. Cf. Locksley Hall : 

As the many wintered crow that leads the clanging rookery home. 

100. Bourn. Cf. Hamlet I. iii. 79. 

102-4. For should not, great, give, and to, the first edition has 
don't, acred, throw, and and. What is the gain ? 
109. Future man. Cf. VII. 279. 
no. See p. xlvi. 
III. Powers is a disyllable. 



CONCLUSION.] A MEDLEY. 187 

Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds, 

Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens. i^S 

Last little Lilia, rising quietly, 
Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph 
From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went. 

113. Broke them up. Destroyed the courts of twilight by destroy- 
ing the twihght, i.e. by changing the twilight into darkness. 

115. Heaven of Heavens. So in i Kings 8, 27 ; 2 Chron. 2. 6 ; 
6. 18 ; Neh. 9. 6. 

116-8. 'Throughout the relation of the story Sir Ralph has been 
standing by, gay in his orange scarf and silken sash, a fitting type 
and illustration of the fantastic vagaries of the romance. Now that 
the conclusion has been reached, which perfects the manhood of the 
Prince and restores Ida to her womanhood, the Knight is disrobed 
of his feminine attire, and is seen once more standing forth in the 
armor that befits his sex and profession ' (Wallace). 

This quiet close is of the sort exemplified by the Greek trage- 
dians. One is reminded of the words of Milton, at the end of Sam- 
son Agonist es : 

His servants he . . . ' >?) 

With peace and consolation hath dismissed, 
And calm of mind, all passion spent. 



English Composition and Rhetoric 

Text-books and works of reference for 
high schools, academies, and colleges. 



Lessons in English. Adapted to the study of American Classics. A 
text-book for high schools and academies. By Sara E. H. Lock- 
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Conn. Cloth. 403 pages. For introduction, $1.12. 

A Practical Course in English Composition. By Alphonso G. New- 
comer, Assistant Professor of English in Leland Stanford Junior 
University. Cloth. 249 pages. For introduction, 80 cents. 

A Method of English Composition. By T. Whiting Bancroft, late 
Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in Brown University. 
Cloth. 1 01 pages. For introduction, 50 cents. 

The Practical Elements of Rhetoric. By John F. Genung, Professor 
of Rhetoric in Amherst College. Cloth. 483 pages. For intro- 
duction, $1.25. 

A Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis. Studies in style and invention, 
designed to accompany the author's Practical Elevients of Rhetoric. 
By John F. Genung. Cloth. 306 pages. Introduction and teachers' 
price, $1.12. 

Outlines of Rhetoric. Embodied in rules, illustrative examples, and a 
progressive course of prose composition. By John F. Genung. 
Cloth. 331 pages. For introduction, $1.00. 

The Principles of Argumentation. By George P. Baker, Assistant 
Professor of English in Harvard University. Cloth. 414 pages. For 
introduction, $1.12. 

The Forms of Discourse. With an introductory chapter on style. By 
William B. Cairns, Instructor in Rhetoric in the University of 
Wisconsin. Cloth. 356 pages. For introduction, ^1.15. 

Outlines of the Art of Expression. By J. H. Gilmore, Professor of 
Logic, Rhetoric, and English in the University of Rochester, N.Y. 
Cloth. 117 pages. For introduction, 60 cents. 

The Rhetoric Tablet. By F. N. Scott, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, 
University of Michigan, and J. V. Denney, Associate Professor of 
Rhetoric, Ohio State University. No. i, white paper (ruled). No. 2, 
tinted paper (ruled). Sixty sheets in each. For introduction, 15 cents. 

Public Speaking and Debate. A manual for advocates and agitators. 
By George Jacob Holyoake. Cloth. 266 pages. For intro- 
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The Practical Elements of Rhetoric. i2mo. Cloth. 483 pages. 

For introduction, ^1.25. 

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The Outlines of Rhetoric is in no sense a condensation or 
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HUDSON'S SHAKESPEARE 



For School and Home Use. 
By henry N. HUDSON, LL.D., 

Author of ^'Tke Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare,^^ 
Editor of " The Harvard Shakespeare,'"' etc. 

Revised and enlarged Editions of twenty-three Plays. Carefully expurgated, 

with explanatory Notes at the bottom of the page, and critical Notes at 

the end of each volume. One play in each volume. 
Square i6mo. Varying in size from 128 to 253 pages. Mailing price of each: 

cloth, 50 cents; paper, 35 cents. Introduction price, cloth, 45 cents; 

paper, 30 cents. Per set (in box), $12.00. (To teachers, $10.00.) 

Why is Hudson's Shakespeare the standard in a majority of the best 
schools where the greatest attention is paid to this subject ? Because 
Dr. Hudson was the ablest Shakespearean scholar America has ever 
known. His introductions to the plays of Shakespeare are well worth 
the price of the volume. He makes the characters almost living flesh 
and blood, and creates a great interest on the part of the student and a 
love for Shakespeare's works, without which no special progress can be 
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The list of plays in Hudson's School Shakespeare is as follows : 



A Midsummer Night's Dream. Henry tfie Fourth, Part I. 



The Merchant of Venice. 
Much Ado about Nothing. 
As You Lilie It. 
The Tempest. 
King John. 
Richard the Second. 
Richard the Third. 



Henry the Fourth, Part II. 
Henry the Fifth. 
Henry the Eighth. 
Romeo and Juliet. 
Julius Ccesar. 
Hamlet. 
King Lear. 



Macbeth. 

Antony and Cleopatra. 

Othello. 

Cymbeline. 

Coriolanus. 

Twelfth Night. 

The Winter's Tale. 



C. T. Winchester, Professor of Eng- 
lish Literature, Wesley an University: 
The notes and comments in the school 
edition are admirably fitted to the need of 
the student, removing his difficulties by 
stimulating his interest and quickening his 
perception. 



Hiram Corson, Professor of English 
Literature, Corriell University : I con- 
sider them altogether excellent. The 
notes give all the aid needed for an under- 
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distraction of the student's mind. The 
introductory matter to the several plays is 
especially worthy of approbation. 



We invite correspondence with all who are interested in the 
study of Shakespeare in the class-room. 



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Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 2 vols. 1003 pages. 

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